There are 6 messages totalling 96 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Texas town names (2)
2. Prescriptivist horror stories
3. Unpredictable British local pronunciations
4. there's (2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 22:02:46 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Texas town names
Alas, the Cat House, alias The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, is no more.
Rudy Troike
Thanks for the pome.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 22:16:49 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Prescriptivist horror stories
I don't, but I recall my great aunt's "receipts".
Rudy Troike
rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 11:27:06 +0100
From: Peter Trudgill
Subject: Re: Unpredictable British local pronunciations
What Dahood says it quite correct!
Peter Trudgill
P.J. Trudgill
Professor of English Language and Linguistics
Section d'anglais
BFSH 2
University of Lausanne
CH-1015 Lausanne
Switzerland
Phone: +41-21-692 4593 Fax: +41-21-692 4637/4510
Home Phone and Fax (CH): +41-21-728 1916
Home Phone and Fax (GB): +44-603-618036
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 12:42:37 +0100
From: j.b.johannessen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ILF.UIO.NO
Subject: Re: there's
Hello.
Thank you very much for forwarding me those messages. They are very interesting.
Janne B.J.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Janne Bondi Johannessen Tel: + 47-22 85 68 14
The Text Laboratory E-mail: jannebj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hedda.uio.no
Department of linguistics
University of Oslo
P.O.box 1102 Blindern
N-0317 Oslo, Norway
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 10:41:27 EST
From: TERRY IRONS
Subject: Re: there's
Dear Theresa,
In 1991 Deborah Schriffin presented a keynote address at the
Mid-America Linguistics Meeting in Stillwater, OK entitled
"Approaches to Topic in Discourse: They have and There Is."
In her talk she reported quantitative information concerning discourse history
information status and syntactic type of NPs in There is constructions.
I don't know if this work has been published anywhere, but you might
be able to contact Debbie and see if she has any quantitative info
on agreement that may help you out.
Terry Irons
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 12:48:31 -0800
From: Paul Pease
Subject: Re: Texas town names
I'm late into this thread, but has anyone mentioned Picketwire, TX? It
was named by the first French settlers, Purgatoire, but that didn't sound
right in the nose of cowboys, and it degraded into something that made
some sort of sense.
And there's a town of Smackover, GA, that was originally named Chemin
Couvre. Sigh.
Paul Pease
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 28 Feb 1994 to 1 Mar 1994
***********************************************
There are 7 messages totalling 179 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Local pronunciation of toponyms
2. One Horror Story
3. POSTERS (3)
4. Expert Witnesses (Florida); "Family"
5. attitude & prescription
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 09:17:06 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Local pronunciation of toponyms
Did I forget to send everybody the following:
La Harpe, Ill.: LAY harp
Terre Haute, Ill. (a few miles from LAYharp): terry hut
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 08:38:36 -0600
From: Joan Livingston-Webber
Subject: One Horror Story
In 11th grade (1963-64), in Johnstown, PA., my English
class was required in unison oral drill, to practice
the correct forms of two shibboleths: the first was
"which" and "witch" (which I think no one ever figured
out) and "mirror" (with two exaggerated
syllabes with instructions to make our jaws jut out twice).
This was honors English and that was why we were introduced
to these niceties of pronunciation. Oh yeah--we were
also forbidden to say "I don't think." We had to say "I
think no one ..." as I did above. We also were to use
"so" for negative comparisons as in "He is not so big as
his brother." (As ... as was marked incorrect or
corrected orally in class.) I find I still make some
of the distinctions I was taught in that class in formal
writing and speaking--except when I'm in the mood for
active rebellion. Funny how that can still feel like
defiance.
When my sister left home, my father told her he didn't
care how she talked as long as she didn't say "stil" mill.
He assumed none of us would take "younz guys" out of town.
Outside of those experiences, I didn't know I had a dialect till
I went to school in Ohio and found out just how badly stigmatized
my accent was. It took me a long time to hear it and then I
went to work on myself with a vengeance. My Intro to Linguistics
course (in 1978) was truly one of the most liberating educational
experiences of my life--no kidding. Occasionally I get one
of me in class and I know just how to teach her. I had one last
semester who'd been educated in Texas. The neon "AHA's!" began
flashing in her eyes almost from the beginning. When she made
an appointment and "confessed" to me her self-prescriptive
attitudes and her desire to change, it was like encountering my
younger self. Without this prescriptivism, there would not be
liberatory linguistics. "Sin greatly that grace may abound"
(or something like that) said M. Luther.
--
Joan Livingston-Webber webber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]unomaha.edu
"What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other."
-Clifford Geertz
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 09:22:14 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: POSTERS
We jsut moved into a new office and I need some stuff for the walls
(June has Tennyson and Queen Victoia, but I need to establish my identity
too!). Anyoby know where I might still get some of those LANE maps?
Or some FAmous Linguist posters (I know LSA gives you one if you have
five new members, but I can't do that here).
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 09:31:00 CST
From: Tom Murray
Subject: Re: Expert Witnesses (Florida); "Family"
I have two things to share with everyone: First, I've received a letter from a
Mr. Joel Charles, who does a lot of work with audio and video recordings for c
ourt trials. At one point in the letter, he wonders, "Is there any person in A
DS in these local areas, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, or Miami, who has th
e capability of testifying in court without falling all over his tongue and who
can influence a jury to believe him? If you know such a person or persons, I'
d like to have their names so that I can specifically name someone instead of j
ust saying, 'You need a linguist from a local college.' Any takers can reach M
r. Charles at 9951 N.W. 5th Place, Plantation, FL 33324 (305-370-7499). Second
, a colleague has asked whether I know anything about the origins of the word F
AMILY in the gay sense. I can't find it in any of my slang dictionaries, or in
any of the Among the New Words essays in AS, and I'm wondering if anyone has a
ny ideas I can pass along. My instincts tell me that this is a very recent coi
nage, maybe as late as 1990, and that it may be linked to Quayle's diatribe on
"family values"--but that's just a hunch. Can anybody help? Thanks in advanc
e.
Tom Murray
P.S.: To those people who have bitmailed me questions for the new PADS on sur
reptitious recording, thanks. The rest of you have till July 1!
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 12:08:31 -0500
From: "William A. Kretzschmar, Jr."
Subject: Re: POSTERS
On Wed, 2 Mar 1994 mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU wrote:
> We jsut moved into a new office and I need some stuff for the walls
> (June has Tennyson and Queen Victoia, but I need to establish my identity
> too!). Anyoby know where I might still get some of those LANE maps?
> Or some FAmous Linguist posters (I know LSA gives you one if you have
> five new members, but I can't do that here).
>
> Tim Frazer
>
We don't know no famous linguists round heah (I don't think), but we got
plenty of the LANE maps. Same rates as advertised in NADS; send me a
private message if you don't remember, since Internet is supposed to be
non-commercial. We have multiples of some maps, chiefly from Vol. 3, but
none of some others, chiefly from Vol. 1. Let me know what you want and
we can look.
******************************************************************************
Bill Kretzschmar Phone: 706-542-2246
Dept. of English FAX: 706-542-2181
University of Georgia Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hyde.park.uga.edu
Athens, GA 30602-6205 Bitnet: wakjengl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 12:49:39 EST
From: Wayne Glowka
Subject: Re: attitude & prescription
>Re Tim Frazer's query about singers and the national anthem.
>
>Do we have American stage speech? Is it just a matter of drama coaches
>telling actors to enunciate /t/ etc., or is there a lectal dimension that
>has some systematic features? These may be rhetorical questions.
> DMLance
Anecdotal Observation from Wayne Glowka: I have been in a number of
plays--all with the same director. My problems with pronunciation came not
from the director, but from the music director. Again, I always had to
deal with the same one, but she had a thing about reduced vowels. My /[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]/
(schwa) had to be replaced with her /E/ (open e). I kept my mouth shut
about variation. Music directors don't negotiate.
I was once a phonetics consultant for _My Fair Lady_. I brought in a
Trudgill tape and handouts for RP and Cockney. One gentleman in the
cast--with a very loud voice--refused to follow the pronunciations for
Cockney. He purposely followed the pronunciation that he heard on his
record of the show and told me that he was doing so because people wouldn't
understand that he was speaking Cockney if he followed the suggestions of
linguists. Thus, there may be set dialect standards that people teach.
People around here have a hard time watching the CBS _In the Heat of the
Night_. The accents are horrible. The accents in _Gone with the Wind_--a
movie that all real people here forgive--make the hair on my back stand up.
Honest local accents are heard on locally made advertisements:
[bU
Subject: Re: POSTERS
Tim (and anybody else),
Write to Bill Kretzschmar to get beautiful LANE maps. I have 'privy'
('outhouse' to you) at home and 'all het up' at the office. Amaze your
friends!
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 1 Mar 1994 to 2 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There are 17 messages totalling 441 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. attitude & prescription
2. POSTERS (2)
3. Local pron. of toponyms (2)
4. local locality pronunciations (2)
5. Something old, something new
6. attitude & prescription:CORRECTION--Sorry
7. bad hair day (2)
8. Family in the gay sense (2)
9.
10. Bounced Mail
11. A Noun Is a Word After a Determiner
12. Local pronunciations of toponyms
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 22:38:18 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: attitude & prescription
I threw it out recently because the tapes to go with it were missing, but there
are a number of books put out by people in Speech on "dialect pronunciation" as
guides for actors and stage directors to train people. Some of the material
in C.M. Wise's long-used work was for this purpose.
Rudy Troike
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 01:38:24 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: POSTERS
Yes, get the posters. The conditions under which they are available are
positive. I got several, including 'theater'. I felt that the right place
for it was hanging somewhere in the Theatre Dept, so I framed it and gave
it to them, with a description of what it is.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 15:57:03 +0700
From: Gwyn Williams
Subject: Re: Local pron. of toponyms
On Thu, 24 Feb 1994, Peter Trudgill wrote:
> There's no point you guys on that side of the Atlantic trying to
> compete with the REAL thing. You all know about Leicester and Worcester.
> But I bet you don't know - just to pick 2 examples at random just down the
> road from me in Norwich:
> Wymondham /wind[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]m/
> Happisburgh /heizbr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]/
Can any generalizations be made about these types of pronunciations? eg.,
vowel merger, deletions, etc?
Gwyn Williams
Linguistics
Thammasat University
Bangkok
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 15:59:03 +0700
From: Gwyn Williams
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciations
On Thu, 24 Feb 1994, Rudy Troike wrote:
> Some speakers
> even have problems with /gw/, presumably reflecting labial-velar similarities.
> One speaker I know pronounces as /byuweynow/.
Really? No-one has had trouble pronouncing my name "Gwyn" [gwIn] though
I often have to repeat it. Any other words with [gw]? "Guam" "guava" ....
Gwyn Williams
Bangkok
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 19:00:08 +0700
From: Gwyn Williams
Subject: Re: Something old, something new
On Sat, 26 Feb 1994, Donald M. Lance wrote:
> In the 1875 edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English
> Language, the word is italicized, indicating that it is a "foreign word"
> The following pronunciation:
> 'koo pong (with macron over oo and breve over o, and no the -ng is not one
> of my ubiquitous typos): presumably ['ku p[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ng]
fascinating! The Thai word is [khuu pong]. I've always wondered where the
final velar came from. I thought it was French, as Thais often seem to
perceive final nasal vowels in French as [ng]. Comments?
Gwyn Williams
Bangkok
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 07:42:03 EST
From: Wayne Glowka
Subject: Re: attitude & prescription:CORRECTION--Sorry
PLEASE NOTE TRANSCRIPTION CORRECTION BELOW.
>>Re Tim Frazer's query about singers and the national anthem.
>>
>>Do we have American stage speech? Is it just a matter of drama coaches
>>telling actors to enunciate /t/ etc., or is there a lectal dimension that
>>has some systematic features? These may be rhetorical questions.
>> DMLance
>
>
>Anecdotal Observation from Wayne Glowka: I have been in a number of
>plays--all with the same director. My problems with pronunciation came not
>from the director, but from the music director. Again, I always had to
>deal with the same one, but she had a thing about reduced vowels. My /[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]/
>(schwa) had to be replaced with her /E/ (open e). I kept my mouth shut
>about variation. Music directors don't negotiate.
>
>I was once a phonetics consultant for _My Fair Lady_. I brought in a
>Trudgill tape and handouts for RP and Cockney. One gentleman in the
>cast--with a very loud voice--refused to follow the pronunciations for
>Cockney. He purposely followed the pronunciation that he heard on his
>record of the show and told me that he was doing so because people wouldn't
>understand that he was speaking Cockney if he followed the suggestions of
>linguists. Thus, there may be set dialect standards that people teach.
>People around here have a hard time watching the CBS _In the Heat of the
>Night_. The accents are horrible. The accents in _Gone with the Wind_--a
>movie that all real people here forgive--make the hair on my back stand up.
> Honest local accents are heard on locally made advertisements:
>CORRECTED VERSION [bUa fronted
>horse-U)--"Bugs in your house? We get them out at Bug House." But then
>these accents embarrass the locals. Don't even ask me about Leckie's
>Income Tax or Tommy's Retreads.
Sorry about the sloppy [kl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tiz]. I hope I have it right now--[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]=ash, x=schwa.
Another doublet of doublets: Geoffrey of Monmouth's _Vita Merlini_ I
noticed offers a twelfth-century sexist double doublet: "patriam . . .
paternam"--opposed I suppose to "patriam maternam."
Wayne Glowka
Georgia College
Milledgeville, GA 31061
wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 08:47:53 -0500
From: Silke Van Ness
Subject: bad hair day
Does anyone know the origin of the expression 'bad hair day?' A friend
overseas (teaching ESL) would like to give her students an informed
answer. Thanks. Silke Van Ness.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 09:41:06 CDT
From: Randy Roberts
Subject: Family in the gay sense
Text item: Text_1
A quick look in the Peter Tamony Collection has produced three cites
for "homosexual family." San Francisco Examiner, 15 April 1980, p. 1
continued on page 10. "A Hard Look/Hot controversy for conference:
What is a family?" This story revolves around Carter's White House
Conference on Families. "[Alec] Velasquez said he asked those
appointing delegates to consider the diversity of Califronia in making
their selections 'representative of the socioeconomic and the ethnic
population of the state and the broad and distinct types of families,
the single-parent families, the unwed families, gay families, intact
families, blended families.'"
California Living Magazine, part of the San Francisco Sunday
Examiner and Chronicle, 15 June 1980, p. 20ff. "A Day With Bruno
Bettelheim" An essay by Jim Jacobs about Bettelheim's talk at the
University of California Extension Center auditorium entitled
"Reflections of the Family." "He [Bettleheim] bellows a response to
the very first question, put forth by a woman in a quiet, timid voice:
'Would you comment on the homosexual family and . . .' 'A homosexual
family is not viable,' he shouts."
San Francisco Examiner, 6 December 1982, p. B2. An article entitled
"Supervisor's idea of a 'family.'" An article about Supervisor
Quentin Kopp's resolution celebrating the role of the family in
American life. "There are a number of interpersonal relationships
in San Francisco that pass for 'families'. Indeed, the Board of
Supervisors, to the embarrassment of The City, has passed an
ordinance offered by gay Supervisor Harry Britt endorsing that
concept. It would provide, in The City's administrative code,
that unwed 'domestic partners,' both heterosexual and homosexual,
could enjoy the same legal benefits as city employees who are
pledged to the traditional marriage."
Randy Roberts
Western Historical Manuscript Collection
University of Missouri-Columbia
robertsr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ext.missouri.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 07:58:32 -0800
From: David Prager Branner
Subject: Re: Local pron. of toponyms
In Chinese dialects you often find placenames whose MEANING and
not only phonology are totally different in dialect from those of the
characters used to write them in the "standard" (?) language. This is
more complicated than "Avenue of the Americas" in Manhattan being called
"Sixth Avenue". For instance, the city of Longyan ("dragon-rock") is actually
called "dragon-forest" in older Longyan dialect, as well as in Amoy.
[liong2-na~2], instead of *[liong2-ngam2]. The nearby town of Longmen
("dragon-gate") is called by this learned name, [liong2-mui~2], everywhere
but in the town itself, where it is known as [lium2-mui~2] "the Lium2
(Mandarin Lin2) family gate". There must be hundreds of examples like this in
every prefecture, though Chinese have not studied them very much.
Does anybody know of comparable examples in English?
Thanks,
dpb
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 11:04:20 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject:
I am posting this message to 2 overlapping groups.
NCTE received a query they passed on to me, and I'm asking for ideas
on how to respond.
A parent of an Ohio 5th grader called NCTE to ask how best to deal with
his son's English teacher. The teacher had students play a grammar
game in which they were asked to sort cards with nouns on them into
baskets labeled person, place, and thing. The child in question, who
had been educated in India before coming to Ohio, had been taught that
nouns named persons, places, things, and animals. He had further been
taught that all life on earth was continuous, that there was no distinction
to be made between humans and animals in a spiritual sense.
Thus, confronted with the card "horse," the child thought, it's not
a place and not a thing, so it has to be a person. Blaaap! Wrong!
goes the teacher, gives the grade conscious kid a "C," and inflames the
parent enough to call NCTE to complain.
I've got a few ideas about what to say (including, "Give it up." But
I'd like to open the question up before responding.
Reply to the list or personally.
Dennis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 10:51:44 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Bounced Mail
If including a previous posting in something you send to the list, be
sure to edit out all references to ADS-L in the headers.
> From: BITNET list server at UGA (1.7f)
> Subject: ADS-L: error report from ACDCA.ITT.COM
>
>The enclosed mail file, found in the ADS-L reader and shown under the spoolid
>0955 in the console log, has been identified as a possible delivery error
>notice for the following reason: "Sender:", "From:" or "Reply-To:" field
>pointing to the list has been found in mail body.
>
> ------------------ Message in error (34 lines) -------------------------
> Date: Thu, 3 Mar 94 08:36:15 PST
> From: benson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]acdca.itt.com (Peter Benson)
> Subject: Re: Local pron. of toponyms
>
> Is this equivalent to folk etymologies - such as sparrow grass for asparagus ?
> So if there were a Native American name for a place that had parts that
> looked vaguely English and was re-interpreted in an English way, would this be an example ?
>
> ----- Begin Included Message -----
>
> Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 07:58:32 -0800
> From: David Prager Branner
> Subject: Re: Local pron. of toponyms
> In Chinese dialects you often find placenames whose MEANING and
> not only phonology are totally different in dialect from those of the
> characters used to write them in the "standard" (?) language. This is
> more complicated than "Avenue of the Americas" in Manhattan being called
> "Sixth Avenue".
> ----- End Included Message -----
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 09:01:55 -0800
From: Arnold Zwicky
Subject: Re: Family in the gay sense
there are two entirely different questions here, both of some
interest. one is the question randy roberts just gave citations on
from the tamony materials: how, and when, has the sense of the word
"family" shifted so as to include persons not related to one another
by blood or marriage? one of these shifts involves treating same-sex
domestic partnerships as the functional equivalent of legal or
religious marriages, so lgb people are relevant here. [as i recall,
the entry for "family" shifted notably between the 2nd and 3rd
editions of the AHD, and geoff nunberg wrote an excellent usage
note on just this point.]
but the original question was about the use, primarily among lgb
people, of predicative "family" to refer to sexual orientation, as in
"I took two courses from you before I finally figured out that you
were family" [my recollection of something said to me by a graduate
student, a gay man, some years ago]. this is clearly a metaphorical
extension of the meaning of "family"; the sense of group identity, or
community, among lgb people is analogous to the sense of belonging
in a group with one's parents, siblings, partner, and/or children.
this latter use is *not* extremely recent (just how old it is i cannot
say; i'm pretty sure it was already current in the early 70s, though i
haven't searched through the texts), but it has developed a special
piquancy in recent years by opposition to the explicitly
anti-homosexual stance of the "family values" movement in the u.s.
arnold zwicky, who has families in several senses
(zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ling.ohio-state.edu or zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]csli.stanford.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 12:58:40 EST
From: Wayne Glowka
Subject: Re: A Noun Is a Word After a Determiner
Some thoughts on Dennis Baron's grammar teacher ethics problem (note the
prenominal nominal modifiers):
1. What a great final examination question for my English grammar class!
2. The teacher forgot *idea* in her box arrangement.
3. Wait until the teacher tries to sort out *action word* from *thing*
with another set of boxes.
4. Is the child a vegetarian? Where do vegetables fit in?
5. Someone probably also needs to tell the teacher that *present tense*
does not necessarily mean 'present time.'
6. Why does grammatical instruction always seem to be the province of
simple-minded, dogmatic fools?
7. The teacher needs to take a modern grammar course, plain and simple.
New requirements for teacher education in Georgia now require students to
study dialects, registers, morphology, etc.--modern scholarship on English.
We have too often sent out teachers armed with nothing but 18th- and
19th-century methods and ideas. I would hate to get psychotherapy from
someone who knew nothing past Freud or have a bridge built by someone who
stopped studying structural mechanics 100 years ago. But my purely
literary colleagues think that 18th- and 19th-century grammatical terms and
methods are sufficient for teachers--but I notice that all of their doctors
are trained in modern medicine. However, the state ed dept. has had enough
sense to sense that something new was in the air. But alas! this teacher
was probably not a product of a secondary ed program anyway.
Wayne Glowka
Georgia College
Milledgeville, GA 31061
wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 11:11:22 PST
From: Peter Benson
Subject: Local pronunciations of toponyms
David Prager Brannerwrites:
Re: Local pron. of toponyms
In Chinese dialects you often find placenames whose MEANING and not
only phonology are totally different in dialect from those of the
characters used to write them in the "standard" (?) language. This is
more complicated than "Avenue of the Americas" in Manhattan being
called "Sixth Avenue".
Is this equivalent to folk etymologies - such as sparrow grass for asparagus ?
So if there were a Native American name for a place that had parts
that looked vaguely English and was re-interpreted in an English way,
would this be an example ?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 19:44:26 EST
From: Allan Metcalf
Subject: Re: POSTERS
To fill the blank space beside the LANE map in a Wal-Mart poster frame, I
made a generic caption explaining LANE and put it in caption-sized type. Will
be glad to send an s-mail copy ready for framing to an
yone who wants it. Or I suppose I could give the text here:
"LINGUISTIC ATLAS
OF NEW ENGLAND
"Originated sixty years ago by Hans Kurath (1891-1992) as part of a planned
Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (a project still in
progress), the Linguistic Atlas of New England was published in three large
volumes between 1939 and 1943. It consists of maps such as this one, based
on phonetic transcriptions made by trained field workers who interviewed 416
residents of 213 communities betwe
en 1931 and 1933, with a questionnaire covering 814 items of vocabulary and
pronunciation.
"The project is described in Hans Kurath, Handbook of the Linguistic
Geography of New England (Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned
Societies, 1939)."
- Allan Metcalf
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 19:08:07 -0400
From: "Becky Howard, Department of Interdisciplinary Writing,
Colgate University"
Subject: Re: bad hair day
First time I heard it was by the media covering Clinton's presidential
campaign, though I'm sure that's not the first use of it.
Becky Howard
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 21:31:09 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciations
Gwyn:
You've never had /gyuwIn/? Come to Texas sometime. I'll show you
/lIngyuwIstIks/.
Rudy Troike
rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 2 Mar 1994 to 3 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There are 5 messages totalling 93 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Something old, something new (2)
2. local locality pronunciations
3. local locality pronunciation
4. bad hair day
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 01:05:18 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Something old, something new
Since posting the [ku p[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ng] info I've off and on wondered how that nasal
got there. I wonder what old British dictionaries have. I don't have
time (or inclination) at the moment to dig further. Maybe someone else will
have a response to Gwyn's question.
In Tom Murray's study of St. Louis speech he reports the following interesting
data: informal midformal formal
% n % n % n
[u] in due, upper class 77 236 55 161 42 138
news, etc. middle " 97 294 90 269 81 242
lower " 100 314 100 351 100 301
[u] in coupon upper class 65 198 49 152 34 101
middle " 74 228 62 169 56 160
lower " 81 238 74 227 71 212
These data suggest that these items are not in the same set. I recall as
a teenager having conversations about whether 'coupon' should be said with
[u] or [yu]. The question also came up within the family regarding the
term 'coupe' for a type of car body, the latter having two questions, the [u]
/ [yu] and the final -e.
But I don't recall any debate in our family over the vowel in 'due' etc.
I had some high school teachers from North Midland areas (Dayton, Wash DC)
and thought their [u] pronunciation might be better, so I consciously worked
on changing several of the words in that set*and managed to get the whole
set changed. For some reason in the past few years (after age 55) I've
played with recovering the earlier pronunciations. These are things in
my awareness; I can't swear to which pronunciations I used 100% of the
time between age 16 and 55. *("That set" was 'due' 'new' etc, but not
necessarily 'coupon' and 'coupe'; I don't recall what whether I included
the latter in "that set")
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 18:31:53 +0700
From: Gwyn Williams
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciations
On Thu, 3 Mar 1994, Rudy Troike wrote:
> You've never had /gyuwIn/? Come to Texas sometime. I'll show you
> /lIngyuwIstIks/.
Never had that one. Usually get "Quin" which makes phonetic sense I gyess.
Gwyn
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 07:11:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Rudy's /lingyuIstIks/ is a dandy pronunciation (and, doubtless, has something
to do with the marginal status of /gw/ clusters in English), but my favorite
in /lingoIstIks/ with its obvious half-folk etymological (?) connection to
'lingo.' While we are on pronunciations of our discipline, do others of you
note a preference for the lax vowel in the first syllable (/lI-/). I think
this is related to pronunciations which have a following alveolar (lIn-/)
rather than velar (/ling-) nasal (as we might expect).
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 09:07:07 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: Something old, something new
Not just Thais... Wyndham Lewis parodies the uneducated British aspirants
to culture in the 1920s as wanting to be dong le movemong, i.e., dans le
mouvement. After all, the velar is as close as shy English speakers get
to nasal...
rk
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 00:00:05 -0500
From: "Gregory J. Pulliam"
Subject: Re: bad hair day
The first use of this I heard was in a movie from about ten years ago, but I
can't remember which one--it was some adolescent coming of age film like
Ferris Beuller's Day Off, or that Tom Cruise thing where he dances in his skivvies to Seger's Old Time R&R, or something like that. Maybe this will refresh some memories out there.
GPulliam
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 3 Mar 1994 to 4 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There are 25 messages totalling 430 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. local locality pronunciation (6)
2. /lIngwIstIks/ (8)
3. Epiphany on the Tennis Court (5)
4. y'all singular attested in Louisiana (2)
5. COOL /u/ or /y/ (2)
6. I and E
7. Sluff/Slough
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 23:11:20 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Re Dennis Preston's query about the vowel in the first syllable in
'linguistics'. My students are divided in their use of [I] and [i] in
transcriptions of their own speech, and the transcription matches the
way I hear their vowels. I haven't managed to make myself make time to see
how these vowels correlate with presence or absence of [g] in this word, but
no motivation for such a count has popped off the homework pages as I've
checked their transcriptions.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 23:15:16 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Re the first vowel in : since there is no phonemic contrast in
this position, one expects the exact position/tenseness (whatever you hear)
in the vowel to vary, much as with /or/ for varieties that lack a hoarse:
horse distinction. This is what phonemic theory (the old, maligned, taxo-
nomic kind) predicts.
Rudy Troike
rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 07:45:53 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
I say /lI/ before the velar nasal. Years ago I used to fight with
students who transcribed /i/ instead of /i/ in -ing constructions.
They insisted they said /i/.
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 08:26:24 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
> I say /lI/ before the velar nasal. Years ago I used to fight with
> students who transcribed /i/ instead of /i/ in -ing constructions.
> They insisted they said /i/.
Ah memories. Way back when I was first introduced to transcription,
my transcription of "linguistics" on a test was marked wrong (the
transcription was of our own speech, btw, not of somebody else's).
Not usually one to protest a teacher's judgment, I did go up after
class to inquire about that one since I thought surely it was just
a careless mistake on his part -- that nobody could really have [I]
instead of [i] in that first syllable. I still can't manage to make
my vocal apparatus come out with an [I] there.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 10:07:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Rudy,
You are right, of course, about the [i] -[I] variation which falls out of the
neutralization before [ng] (when the pronunciation is [linggwIstIks], using
-ng- for angma, the velar nasal). But I note that when the pronunciation is
[lIngwIstIks] (with an alveolar nasal preceding [g]), the vowel is invariably
[I].
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 11:18:42 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Epiphany on the Tennis Court
Being far from serious about the game of tennis, I often entertain myself
on the tennis court with thinking about all kinds of other things. This
morning I was thinking about our discussion of the vowels in "linguistics"
and started mumbling the word over and over. (My tennis friends didn't
think anything about my mumbling since they know that I often use tennis
games for practicing French or German -- fortunately, they're not serious
tennis players either.) Suddenly I realized that what I'm confident used
to be [i] in my pronunciation has moved closer to [I]. This is kind of
scary. Next thing you know I'll be saying [tEn] instead of [tIn] for
"ten." Must be yankee infiltration.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 12:24:57 CST
From: Michael Picone
Subject: y'all singular attested in Louisiana
My interest in Louisiana has much more to do with French than English,
however, last week when I stopped in Covington for lunch on the way to
doing some recording in Cajun country, I finally stumbled over what would
seem to be a singular y'all user:
I stopped at the Pasta Kitchen for some raviolis (good, too).
I was alone. My "waitress"
(that's what she calls herself, though her training manual lists her position
as "server"), a young woman (late teens or early twenties) came over to my
table when it appeared I had finished and said, verbatim, "Y'all done now?"
At first it wasn't clear if this was a contraction of `Are you _all done_ now'
or a singular y'all. So I inquired to get a fix on her metalinguistic sense of
this. I will share with you the information that she divulged.
She grew up and lived in New Orleans until about 5 yrs. ago, and still
maintains contact with her friends there. It was 5 yrs. ago that she
moved to "this side of the Lake" (Ponchartrain). She uses singular y'all
frequently. Her friends point this out to her and tell her not to, "but they
do it, too." She thinks it's more prevelant "on the other side of the Lake."
It has nothing to do with being polite. She remembers once getting into an
argument with a friend: "I started saying y'all to her and another friend
sitting there said, `What're you yellin' at me for, I didn't do anything!'"
She is metalinguistically sensitive indicated by the fact that she has
consciously tried to eliminate her New Orleans accent (with only partial
success).
If anyone is seriously pursuing the question of y'all singular, this might
be an indication of a good location for some field work.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 15:09:27 -0500
From: ALICE FABER
Subject: COOL /u/ or /y/
Perhaps related to the loss of a vocalic distinction between DUE and DO, we
have the increased fronting of /u/ characteristic of Labov's Southern Shift,
and perhaps in other regions also. (For those who are unfamiliar with it, this
fronting can be extreme enough, with enough unrounding, that /u/ is perceived
as /i/.) Stereotypically fronted words are DUDE and COOL, in
"California-speak". I just heard a radio commercial for Drakes* Wingdings. A
son was commenting on how cool (/kyl/) Wingdings are. The father, attempting
to relate to his son, agrees that Wingdings are cool (/kul/). The son corrects
the father, asserting that weather is /kul/ but Drakes is /kyl/. (Drakes was
/driks/, a la Northern Cities Shift, leading me at first to perceive it as
DRINKS.) My question is this: is this split just advertising-ese? Or is there
a real trend out there (somewhere) for both a lexical split of COOL into its
literal and metaphorical meanings and a phonological split of fronted and
un-fronted /u/ into /u/ and /y/?
Alice Faber
Faber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]Yalehask
*In case Drakes is a local NY area brand, it's a brand of snack foods like
Little Debbie and Hostess. I really DON'T want to start a thread on brand
names...
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 13:36:06 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
Tim--
As I suggested in my note last night, the students would of course
have trouble hearing a difference between [iy] and [I] before the velar,
since there would be no phonemic difference. With my own /)/:/a/ phonemic
contrast (here /)/ = "open o"), I am always perceptually bothered by the
phonetic wanderings of those who don't. I often find similar reactions
to your students in the transcription of words like and , where
there is similarly no contrast, and the phonetic realization of the archi-
phoneme is free to wander around.
Rudy Troike
rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 13:50:39 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
Natalie--
I'm unfortunately not as much of a Southerner as you. I remember a
good friend, Neil Craig, a Central Texan by birth, who had a really very
high tense [i] in , remarkably so to my ears, though he consistently
identified it with the /I/ of , not the /iy/ of . For me, the
vowels of , , are all perceptually the same, /I/. I don't
doubt that a sound spectograph would show some detailed differences between
the first two, and I can hear them if I draw the vowel out, so it becomes
[I:y], the [y]-glide of course coming as the tongue moves through the position
on the way to the velar closure.
Rudy Troike [rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 14:00:39 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Dennis,
Right -- presumably one would be surprised by an [iy] before [n],
since in that context [iy] would be unequivocally /iy/, given the contrast
of /iy/:/I/ before /n/. The phonetic contrast would be perceptually salient
in that context, though not before /ng/.
Rudy Troike [rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 14:09:07 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Epiphany on the Tennis Court
Natalie--
Happens to me every time I teach phonemic transcription, and play-act
at producing [tEn] for the benefit of my class. It is an insidious thing.
Perceptually, though, I often have to do a double-take on certain person's
pronunciation of [tEn] as /taen/, since my phonemic filter captures the [En]
as necessarily /aen/. Sometimes after a bout of phonemic transcription,
I even start restoring the long-lost /h/ before /w/!
--Rudy Troike [rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 16:08:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: COOL /u/ or /y/
My local students (East Lansing, MI, many Detroiters) note that [kul] is a
word for weather and the like but that [kyl] (a significantly fronted vowel)
or [kUl] a significantly laxed and lowered vowel is appropriate for the 'cool'
cool.
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 16:12:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Rudy,
You will lose Valley Boy status if you continue to claim that the vowels of
king, kin, and ken are all the same for you. You mean to say there is no hint
of lowering and diphthongization in your 'king.' (Perhaps there is some
lexical specification to this. I note that the process is much stronger in
'bring' and nearly categorical in 'thing' in my (Louisville, KY) speech.)
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 15:24:40 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
> identified it with the /I/ of , not the /iy/ of . For me, the
> vowels of , , are all perceptually the same, /I/. I don't
My dog just walked over and started pawing at me with a concerned look
in his eyes as I sat here muttering "king," "kin," "ken" over and over.
My vowel in "king" is definitely different from the vowel in the other
two.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 16:20:06 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Re: Epiphany on the Tennis Court
For some time now, I have been consciously stressing the /n/ on the end
of my first name when introducing myself to someone new, since I was so
often being misunderstood as "Ellie". Just a few weeks ago, I realized
that no matter how long the /n/, people with /En/ will still have trouble
perceiving /ElIn/ as the proper pronunciation of my name.
E.Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 16:28:24 -0500
From: Martha Howard
Subject: I and E
When I first came to West Virginia, I was curious about the students'
references to " Ink pInz" (writing instrument until I realized that in
their vocabulary "pin" and "pen" were both pronounced "pIn; therefore, one
must distinguish which kind of pIn was being referred to. My first reaction
had been to wonder what other kind of pen does one write with? Also,
more frequent 30 years ago than now was the usually lower class or lower
middle class pronunciation of fish and dish with the vowel sound of eat.
And bush and push with the vowel sound of boot. The nurse in the delivery room
kept telling me to poosh--much more annoying than the labor itself! I
refused and pUsht!
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 15:29:07 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: Epiphany on the Tennis Court
> Happens to me every time I teach phonemic transcription, and play-act
> at producing [tEn] for the benefit of my class. It is an insidious thing.
I have a very hard time coming out with that [E] when trying to explain
to my students that some people make a distinction between "ten" and
"tin." Usually I can find a yankee in the class to demonstrate it for
them.
> as necessarily /aen/. Sometimes after a bout of phonemic transcription,
> I even start restoring the long-lost /h/ before /w/!
Interesting. I've never lost that [h]. It took me forever to catch on
to a sign in a shop window one time that I knew must be some kind of a
pun that I wasn't catching. I can't remember now what it said except
that the first "word" in it was the letter Y. I stared and stared and
finally realized that it was supposed to stand for "why." The pun didn't
work for me.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 14:37:31 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
Dennis,
You'll remember McDavid said I had a creolized variety of English (pr
or maybe the perfect Midland), including most of the mergers in both South
Midland and North Midland (though patriotically, I cling to the southern side).
My problem in teaching at the University of Texas was that most of my students
did not identify me as a Texan. Your remark about and makes
me wonder whether the traditional South Midland lowering of the vowel in these
words to /E/ or /ae/ could have been a result of an uncoscious reaction to the
raising effect of the following velar, to prevent an interpretation as /iy/?
Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 14:52:09 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Epiphany on the Tennis Court
I don't know how widespread it is, but there is a cd-records store chain
out west here called Wherehouse. Not too long ago I found a sign in our
supermarket from one stock clerk to another saying that some more vegetables
could be found in the wherehouse.
Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 16:08:22 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: y'all singular attested in Louisiana
Thanks, Mike Picone. Good evidence for singular 'y'all'.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 16:13:56 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
I've had a couple of students, both from cental Missouri, who do not have
a final velar nasal. [kin] = 'king' or 'keen' and [kIn] = 'kin'
These were graduate students who understood and liked phonetics, and I
observed their speech closely. One was an advisee whom I saw often, and
I noted the [-in] pronunciation of '-ing' in conversation. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 22:13:00 EST
From: "James_C.Stalker"
Subject: Re: Sluff/Slough
I have just been catching up on my ADS list, and a the risk of revisiting a
stale and out-of-date subject, I might mention that the ~ variation is
an interesting one in AM Eng. I know many of the respondents on the ADS list,
and I know that they have been (and may still be) intimately acquainted with a
particular kind of beer--namely beer, which in its more upscale (and
in its past) incarnations was beer. That spelling is long gone in
the US. However, is still and is still . The
as a spelling for is quite common in the US. I checked my venerable
Webster's 10th to see what they had to say, and they list as
"chiefly Brit var of DRAFT." Now the interesting part is that the around these parts is the , not the . As my students say, "go figure!"
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 22:36:22 +0500
From: Robert Howren
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
On Sat, 5 Mar 1994 mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU wrote:
> I say /lI/ before the velar nasal. Years ago I used to fight with
> students who transcribed /i/ instead of /i/ in -ing constructions.
> They insisted they said /i/.
>
> Tim Frazer
_________________
And probably did. Mine do.
--Bob
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Robert Howren Dept. of Linguistics
howren[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gibbs.oit.unc.edu University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3155
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 21:27:12 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: /lIngwIstIks/
It looks as though Don Lance's examples have extended the neutralization
of -/n/:-/ng/ in participles and gerunds to all cases of -/ng/. I have
encountered this happening in and its compounds, in Texas, including
in a well-educated speaker, but have never seen a complete merger before.
A great example of the genesis of language change (if others should copy them).
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 4 Mar 1994 to 5 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There are 3 messages totalling 51 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. COOL /u/ or /y/
2. local locality pronunciation
3. y'all singular attested in Louisiana
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 08:27:00 EST
From: BERGDAHL%A1.OUVAX.mrgate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: Re: COOL /u/ or /y/
From: NAME: David Bergdahl
FUNC: English
TEL: (614) 593-2783
To: NAME: MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"
In this part of SE Ohio fronted variants of [u] and [U] are common, e.g. 'cool'
and 'good' esp. among the Appalachian population. Appalachian is a good test
case: Pennsylvannian-derived settlers say it with [ae] while Kentucky-derived
ones favor [e]. Other interesting (pronounced inner resting) features here are
the tensing of [I], [E] & [U] before sh in fish, special (=spatial) and push.
The [E] to [e] shift is heard far outside this region and seems to have no
social value, and the shift occurs before {zh} too, e.g. measure. The [I] to
[i] shift has some appalachian associations but seems to be losing its social
value in words like decision and transmission: polysyllables.
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 08:27:11 EST
From: BERGDAHL%A1.OUVAX.mrgate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: Re: local locality pronunciation
From: NAME: David Bergdahl
FUNC: English
TEL: (614) 593-2783
To: NAME: MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"
In Athens OH as well {thing} has [ae] with an upgliding diphthong if stressed
fully enough. Reminds me of my favorite country song, "If you work your
[faenggerz] to the bone, whaddya get? bony fingers"
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 09:04:27 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: y'all singular attested in Louisiana
what's startling up here in the no'th is ravioliS, the redundant plural
marker. Never hoid dat before in Bwooklyn.
rk
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 5 Mar 1994 to 6 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There is one message totalling 23 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. journalist seeks help
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 12:38:03 EST
From: City Paper <71011.3715[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: journalist seeks help
I'm writing an essay for the Washington City Paper -- D.C.'s weekly -- and
am looking for experts in:
--Appalachian dialects;
--the dialects common to Washington, D.C.;
--and how people consciously change their accents.
If you can recommend such an expert (or if you *are* one), please send
e-mail with your telephone number to my CompuServe address:
73352,535[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]compuserve.com.
Lisa Gray
Associate editor
Washington City Paper
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 6 Mar 1994 to 7 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There are 7 messages totalling 138 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Adam's off ox (7)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 10:37:35 EST
From: Larry Horn
Subject: Adam's off ox
Is anyone familiar with the original and regional distribution of the above?
This came up on another list, and I submitted my own speculation, which is
that the phrase occurs only in the expression "X doesn't know Y from Adam's
off ox", the suggestion being that Y is even more unfamiliar to X than Adam
himself would be ("I don't know him from Adam"). The off ox, I assume
(without evidence), is the farther of the two in the yoke, although again I
have no idea why that should be relevant here. Maybe I've got it all wrong,
in fact. Can anyone help?
--Larry
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 10:39:34 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
On Tue, 8 Mar 1994, Larry Horn wrote:
> Is anyone familiar with the original and regional distribution of the above?
> This came up on another list, and I submitted my own speculation, which is
> that the phrase occurs only in the expression "X doesn't know Y from Adam's
> off ox", the suggestion being that Y is even more unfamiliar to X than Adam
> himself would be ("I don't know him from Adam"). The off ox, I assume
> (without evidence), is the farther of the two in the yoke, although again I
> have no idea why that should be relevant here. Maybe I've got it all wrong,
> in fact. Can anyone help?
>
> --Larry
>
I think I remember this as an item we asked for during the field
interviews for DARE. So it should be in DARE; I'd look it up in vol. I
but I'm at the office and my books are at home.
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 08:22:32 PST
From: Peter Benson
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
I believe the off ox is the one you DON'T walk next to. I heard this from
a linguist friend from Salt Lake City.
Peter Benson, Ph.D. | ITT Aerospace/Communications Division
phone: (619)578-3080 | 10060 Carroll Canyon Road
fax: (619)578-5371 | San Diego, CA 92131
email: benson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]acdca.itt.com or Peter_Benson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CSUSM.edu or benson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]escondido.csusm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 12:20:30 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
I know the phrase only from bluegrass Kentucky friends, who use it (as Larry
Horn describes) the way New Yorkers (at least the ones I grew up with) would
say Adam's house-cat. The house-cat form seems "normal" to me, the off-ox
a dialect improvement---we can't forget that people take pleasure in speech
and coining phrases, though linguists used to take nonce-inventions with
solemn unsuspiciousness, I think. Still, I think both house-cat and
off-ox are really "improvements" on plain "...from Adam." I don't think
they express even greater unfamiliarity.
RK
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 12:45:57 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
Larry Horn -- Your explanation of 'Adam's off ox' jibes (not jives) with
the usage common in the maternal side of my immediate ancestors. They lived
in southwestern Arkansas from the 1870s till the 1940s, when the South
Midland diaspora expanded greatly in its geographical distribution. I don't
know the distribution of the term. It should be in DARE I, but I'n not
dere where DARE is. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 14:06:40 EST
From: Larry Horn
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
Sorry; I should have checked DARE first. For some reason, I thought the entry
would be coming out under O, instead of being already out under A. And sure
enough, a typically great entry, complete with variants, many of them
wonderfully folk-etymological: Adam's old ox, old fox, all fox [!]; Madam's
off-ox [as in Madam, I'm Adam?]; Bettashazur's/Gabe's/devil's off-ox; Adam's
off-bull/brother/hat(band)/pet monkey/house cat.
The earliest citation is 1894: He didn't know me from Adam's off ox. The
others are in the same vein (I wouldn't know him from Adam's all fox, etc.).
The principal expression is "chiefly west of the Appalachians", the house cat
variant largely found in the South Atlantic and Gulf states, where off oxen
are presumably rare. (Neither is attested in the Northeast.)
Then there are the symptoms of decreasing transparency: slow/poor/stubborn
as Adam's off ox. Best citation, from Yankee magazine a few years back:
"One of my mother's favorite expressions was, 'He doesn't know any more
than Adam's off-ox.' Never could figure out what it was all about."
What I still don't know is whether my speculation is right: if I don't know
him from Adam's off ox, he's even farther from my ability to
identify/recognize him than if I (just) don't know him from Adam. And I'm
still not sure why it's the off, or farther, ox--if that's the one that's
harder to make out or recognize by virtue of being farther away,
you'd think it was the closer one (the on ox?) that would figure in the
collocation.
Larry
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 20:07:24 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
For Larry Horn (& whoever else reads it) --
I came along a generation too late to have worked with oxen. Did plow
with a mule, though.
'Adam's off ox' isn't just a matter of familiarity. The expression carries
a mild put-down, hazarded because the unknown ox isn't present. The lead
ox is an important critter, and Adam would know for sure which one it is. But
Adam may have six or so oxen in his stable, one of which is a good lead ox,
the others being good enough to serve as off oxen because they'll follow the
lead ox. So, if I don't know you from Adam's off ox, it's not just that I
don't know you. I may not know either Adam or his lead ox, but I really don't
know you. The expression is hyperbole, however, rather than a real put-down
of the poor ox that may come along and gore my milk cow. DMLance
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 7 Mar 1994 to 8 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There is one message totalling 20 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Adam's off ox/house cat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 07:42:02 EST
From: Wayne Glowka
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox/house cat
One of my colleagues from southern North Carolina often complains that our
students don't know anymore than "Adam's house cat." Thanks to this thread
I will have some obnoxious thing to say about variants of Adam's off ox
next time she makes such a pronouncement.
By the way, the chairman and I had great laughs about chairheads and
huperdaughters, etc., but our sense of humor was not shared by the three
persons who snapped at me about obscuring the real issue with such
trivialities. I guess I need to study more womyn's herstory to fully
appreciate etymology. I'll start with Isidore of Seville who tells me that
beavers are called *castra* because they castrate themselves to get away
from hunters who want their testacles for perfume. Thus should a man do to
avoid temptation. I'm getting old and grumpy.
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 8 Mar 1994 to 9 Mar 1994
**********************************************
There is one message totalling 18 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. phonetic fonts
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 19:55:24 -0500
From: George Dorrill
Subject: phonetic fonts
Two requests:
1) Can anyone give me any information about phonetic alphabet
fonts compatible with WordPerfect on DOS?
2) Can anyone give me information about programs facilitating
drawing tree diagrams on WordPerfect on DOS?
Thanks a lot,
George Dorrill
Dorrill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]selu.edu
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 9 Mar 1994 to 10 Mar 1994
***********************************************
There are 6 messages totalling 92 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Adam's off ox (3)
2. journalist seeks help (2)
3. phonetic fonts
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 06:41:30 -0400
From: "Becky Howard, Department of Interdisciplinary Writing,
Colgate University"
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
I have a vague memory of my father (a farmer) talking about the "near" ox and
the "off" ox. Next time I talk to him, I'll ask him.
Becky Howard
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 07:54:04 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
> I have a vague memory of my father (a farmer) talking about the "near" ox and
> the "off" ox. Next time I talk to him, I'll ask him.
The "off" ox is the one on the right. The one on the left is supposedly
more important since it leads. Or so I've read/heard. I have no first-
hand experience with either on or off oxen.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 02:28:47 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: journalist seeks help
I don't believe that a change in accents is ever entirely conscious,
nor do I believe that any merely cnscious effort to change accent will
ever succeed--maybe on rare occasionsions only.
Tim F
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 09:13:25 CST
From: salikoko mufwene
Subject: Re: phonetic fonts
>1) Can anyone give me any information about phonetic alphabet
>fonts compatible with WordPerfect on DOS?
WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS has a phonetic font (among the WP Characters
options). It works very well, despite some minor problems with digraphic
representations. The overstrike option allows you to place diacritics even
on these phonetic symbols. I haven't tried to draw diagrams yet with the
processor, although it comes with a Graphics component. You need a mouse to
operate some of the functions in this version of WP.
Best wishes, George.
Sali.
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Linguistics, U. of Chicago
s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu
312-702-8531
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 12:40:53 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: journalist seeks help
Tim Frazer commented on conscious attempts to change accent. I agree that
accent itself can't be changed by conscious effort -- not in a massive
global sense. But one might change a relatively small pattern, such as
[u] / [ju] after coronal obstruents, as I did in my teenage years. My
language behavior lately, however, has made wonder how global and permanent
the change was. I doubt that I could have been as successful with /I/ and
/E/ before nasal consonants. I can make the I/E distinction in Spanish or
German, but can't do it convincingly in English. When I read Old English
words aloud, I access my "second language" phonological system and make
the distinction, but in no way can I claim any degree of fluency in OE.
I developed my Spanish phonology working in tomato and cotton fields with
pre-bracero-era illegal workers from Mexico in my early teens. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 14:25:39 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Adam's off ox
My memory of discussing near (regionally, = lead) ox with relatives (now
gone) is that the lead ox / horse / mule is the one that takes the initiative
when orders are given. It may be on the right or left, depending on the
preferences of the animal (discovered by trial and lesson) and the driver
of the team. I think I've read or heard that the lead animal is usually
on the left. These comments are to be taken as being as authoritative as
individual (as opposed to collective) memory can be. DMLance
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 10 Mar 1994 to 11 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 9 messages totalling 217 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. journalist seeks help
2. Conscious Learning of Accent (3)
3. Actors & Accent (4)
4. Bounced Mail
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 00:29:40 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: journalist seeks help
Re Tim Frazer's comment on changing accents, note Kevin Costner's unnotable
effort to play Robin Hood.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 08:53:34 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Conscious Learning of Accent
Tim Frazer posted an implicit question yesterday or the day before, and I
responded with something that was unclear and in fact nonsense.
So, a clarification. I do not make the I/E distinction before nasals in
English in running speech and can't do it convincingly in conscious speech,
at least not convincing to me. But when I speak Spanish, I automatically
produce combinations that are very similar to English [En] and not at all
like English [In] or [en]. Of course Spanish does not have i/I or e/E, so
I can't be making an I/E distinction in Spanish. The point I should have made
is that in my early teens I "trained my articulators" to produce in Spanish
a sound combination that is similar to one I cannot do in English. When I
speak Spanish, I switch to an alternate phonology, one that I had to learn
with some degree of consciousness because I did so after age 8, primarily
after age 10 when I was working with Mexican nationals who came across to
work on our farm. I vaguely remember consciously working on my phonology as
Herman or one of our regulars corrected me. So I developed an alternate
phonology through conscious effort, but with natural input in natural
conversations (not classroom exercises) on natural topics.
How is this related to Tim Frazer's comment about consciously changing one's
accent? Here at the University of Missouri most of the undergraduates are
from the metropolitan areas, but a substantial number frome from rural areas.
At some point I ask if any change accents when they come to the university.
The rural Missourians all say a resounding "Yes" and the St. Louisans are
dumbfounded by the question. And the Ozarkians DO change their accents; I can
hear it. Not all of them are successful in getting the I/E distinction
before nasals but they get the other features very well, particularly the
collapse of ah/aw into a sound that is more like my ah than my aw. But this
one is rampant throughout the U.S. in younger generations. These are
individual phonemic matters; accent is more subtle, having to do with
timing; degree and nature of breaking; vowel raising/lowering/retracting/
fronting. The Ozarkers do make these subtle changes. I don't have much
contact with students in Agriculture, Business. or Engineering, but I
suspect that they make less effort to change than the Arts & Sciences
students do. My students also tell of changing accent when they go home
(like the Yali from Sparta in the video "American Tongues"). This, I'd
say, is "consciously changing accent" to some degree. Biloquiality,
with conscious effort at some age. Maybe others will want to expand on this
complex topic. Natural-sounding biloquiality may be hard to accomplish.
Tim seems to be suggesting that it's impossible. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 09:43:07 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Actors & Accent
Rudy reminded listers and lurkers of Kevin Kostner's lack of success in
adapting his speech. Remember John Wayne and his linguistic versatility?
And now Nick Nolte, whose attempt at an Italian accent in "Lorenzo's Oil"
was laughable and embarrassing. Could you imagine Olivier or Gilgud
doing any other accent? But they'd never have been cast in a role that
demanded a change in accent. Rod Steiger. Meryl Streep.
Young people may not react to Costner's Robin Hood accent the way those of
us over 50 do. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 10:38:39 PST
From: Ed Finegan
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
I wonder whether attempts at foreign and regional and historical accents
wouldn't be better viewed as a kind of "ear dialect" comparable to "eye
dialect," where accuracy is not the object so much as suggestivity. Of
course, there are cases where especially historical accuracy may be prized,
and there are certainly some accentually impressive actors, but, as witeye
dialect, the suggeson of a different world may be suffifor some p
purposes. ALAS.
Ed Finegan
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 12:09:40 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
Re Don Lance's comment on younger listeners not noticing the variability
in Costner's "British accent" in his Robin Hood, I suspect the familiar
factor of noticing that which is different and overlooking that which is
the same (the JFK "Cubar"/"vigah" syndrome) may be at work for people
focusing on the message content rather than the form (as linguists are
congenitally doomed to do).
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 12:23:37 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
Re Don Lance's I/E + Nasal system-switching from English to Spanish, I did not
have the advantage of learning Spanish the "natural" way, and though we had
native-speaker teachers, I don't recall any attention to pronunciation. When
I lived in Mexico I consciously worked on introducing the distinction in my
Spanish (without leaking through to my English), but there remain earlier-
learned lexical items (such as ) which I unconsciously still
pronounce with [I]. I still don't really HEAR the difference in Spanish if
I am focusing on the content rather than form (it is hard to do both), and
as in English, I use spelling as the cue. (I don't know what the theoretical
import is of adding a Spell-Check to Chomsky's Phonetic Form [PF] component.)
Come to think of it, one reason for the problem with is that it
is also part of my English lexicon. What brought it to mind was hearing an
English speaker on campus the other day saying /iynchIlada/, with exaggerated
stress on the first syllable.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 12:28:11 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
Another comment on the hazards of attempting biloquiality: we are all
familiar with Labov's "lames" -- you may literally never be able to go home
again linguistically if the neurological system has been modified. On the
other hand, if the neurological storage is somehow kept separate, it may
still be possible to access it.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 20:18:12 CST
From: Mike Picone
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
The subject of actors & accents has become more intriguing to me since
transplanting to the South. While it is true that when Meryl Streep tries
to imitate a Polish accent, for example, there are relatively few people,
other than linguists, who are listening while undertaking meta-accentual
monitoring, this is not true when it comes to the portrayal of Southern
speech habits. Untold numbers of Southerners are, despite themselves,
very much aware of the artificiallity that, for them, is injected into a
film when non-Southerners attempt to mimic their speech. Hollywood,
and America in general, often give the impression that the South is a
forgotten audience. So accents will conform to Northern stereotypes of what
constitutes Southern speech, especially when, as is so often the case,
the white "Southerner" is to be the clown, villain, village idiot, rabid
Bible thumper or whatever.
I remember thinking to myself during the last presidential election, that
NPR's occasional derisive use of the term "bubba vote" made it clear that
condescension towards the (white) South was not considered a PC faux pas.
True, "bubba" does not have quite the same negative force as do "redneck"
and various racial slurs, but it was clearly less than respectful. NPR
commentators were not sensitive to this and seemingly shared the perenniel
blind-spot that prevails in American media when it comes to the South.
Going back to the question of stereotyped accents, am I right in assuming that
American Revolution films have it all backwards? Instead of giving British
RP accents to the Colonial Americans, it's some of the British who should be
speaking with what would be perceived today to be an American accent.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 21:12:16 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Bounced Mail
If including a previous list posting in your message, be sure to edit
out any headers that name the list. Otherwise, the message will bounce.
(It's a loop-prevention measure.)
> From [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:LISTSERV[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Sat Mar 12 19:14:59 1994
> From: BITNET list server at UGA (1.7f)
> Subject: ADS-L: error report from VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU
> To: Natalie Maynor
>
>The enclosed mail file, found in the ADS-L reader and shown under the spoolid
>7924 in the console log, has been identified as a possible delivery error
>notice for the following reason: "Sender:", "From:" or "Reply-To:" field
>pointing to the list has been found in mail body.
>
>------------------------ Message in error (50 lines) -------------------------
> Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 17:14:20 -0800
> From: ctlntt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]violet.berkeley.edu
> Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
>
> I wonder whether attempts at foreign and regional and historical accents
> wouldn't be better viewed as a kind of "ear dialect" comparable to "eye
> dialect," where accuracy is not the object so much as suggestivity. Of
> course, there are cases where especially historical accuracy may be prized,
> and there are certainly some accentually impressive actors, but, as witeye
> dialect, the suggeson of a different world may be suffifor some p
> purposes. ALAS.
>
> Ed Finegan
>
> There's definitely an affinity between 'ear dialect' and 'eye dialect'
> in that both rely heavily on salient features that listeners/readers
> can be expected to recognize as belonging to the dialect/accent in
> question. I have been working with the literary representation of
> rural nonstandard Brazilian Portuguese and nonstandard Southern Spanish
> and it is quite clear that the successful authors are those who can
> modify spelling so as to capture those features.
> MMAzevedo
> ctlntt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]violet.berkeley.edu
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 11 Mar 1994 to 12 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 9 messages totalling 436 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Assisting Schools via E-mail
2. Adam's off ox
3. HEL-L (2)
4. Actors & Accent (4)
5. you all singular--north Texas
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 22:52:23 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Assisting Schools via E-mail
To all interested linguists:
My colleague Carl Berkhout just copied the following to me,
which looks like an interesting opportunity to put some of our expertise
to use working with the schools in kind of an e-NDEA way. It
essentially asks if you would be willing to do some electronic volunteer
work in behalf of unhigher U.S. public education.
The idea is that you would be an on-line subject specialist who would
work with teachers and their students. The scheme might be of interest to
those of us who would like to see our rarefied areas of interest
represented a little better in high schools and grade schools.
Anyway, you might pass this on to anyone you think might
be interested.
***----------------------> Original Mail From
***------------------------------------------------------------------***
WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO SHARE WHAT YOU KNOW WITH
PRE-COLLEGE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS BY ELECTRONIC MAIL?
Recent estimates indicate that there are now more than
300,000 classroom teachers from primary, middle, and
secondary schools who hold accounts on the Internet.
This makes a very special kind of learning available to
them: one which directly involves subject matter experts
communicating with students and teachers about their
specialties, via electronic mail.
With support from the Texas Center for Educational
Technology, we (at the University of Texas at Austin)
have piloted and are now expanding an Internet-based
service (the "Electronic Emissary") that brings together
pre-college students, their teachers, and subject matter
experts (SMEs) electronically, helping them to create
telecomputing exchanges centered around the students'
learning in the SMEs' disciplines. For example,
* A class studying South America could learn about
recent global environmental research results from a
scientist who studies rainforest deforestation in
Brazil.
* A class studying geometry might "talk" electronically
with Euclid, who is actually a mathematics professor.
* A class studying the future of education might
converse with an emerging technologies specialist from
California's Silicon Valley.
* A class studying American History might
electronically interview Harry Truman, who is really a
curator with the National Archives.
* A class exploring the rapidly-changing governmental
structures that are emerging in what was once the Soviet
Union might correspond with a group of graduate
political science students at a university in the CIS.
* Or, a class reading _Huckleberry Finn_ might
correspond with an African-American studies scholar
about the repercussions resulting from the enacting of
the Emancipation Proclamation.
In successive phases of the project, increasing numbers
of SMEs or SME groups are needed to correspond regularly
(approximately 4 times per week) with primary, middle
school, or secondary students and their teachers (1 SME
or expert group per class, study group, or "special
student"). Each electronic exchange will begin with
approximately 2 weeks of project planning via electronic
mail between the SMEs and the teachers. Communications
with students will begin on mutually convenient dates,
and will continue for previously-arranged periods of
time, usually between 2 and 10 weeks.
Subject matter expert volunteers are sought in all
academic disciplines and areas of practical expertise.
Communications with classes will occur during the rest
of the spring 1994 semester, then again in the fall 1994
and spring 1995 semesters, and beyond.
==> If you would like to find out more about
==> participating in this project, please read on.
* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *
Hello! Thank you for the interest that you expressed in the "Electronic
Emissary" project. I am Judi Harris, a faculty member in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at
Austin.
What follows is more detailed information about the Electronic Emissary
project.
Purpose
We are now expanding the Emissary project, which was successfully
piloted during the spring 1993 semester. Through our work, we hope to:
1. refine and implement a workable, useful
service for educators and their students,
2. study the ways in which adults and children
converse via electronic mail,
3. and plan for further expansion of the Emissary.
Participation
If you want to be a subject matter expert (SME) for the project, we will
ask you to agree to:
1. Send and receive/read electronic mail to and from
the class (teacher and students) with whom we ask
you to correspond AT LEAST THREE TIMES EACH WEEK,
for as long as you and the classroom teacher agree to
conduct the exchange. There will be two electronic
conversations taking place: one between you and the
students about the topic(s) of your expertise, and another
between you and the teacher with whom you will
collaboratively coordinate the activity. Please note that we
would like you to engage in *inquiry-based* exchange with
the students, during which they will have many opportunities
to ask you questions, rather than you delivering an
"electronic lecture."
2. Allow automatically-generated copies of your
messages to the teachers and students to be read and
retained by those of us coordinating the Emissary project, for
use in our research in adult-child conversation via
telecomputing networks. Your names or identities will not be
revealed in any way in any report (oral or written) that we
present on the results of the research. We will also supply
you with electronic copies of all manuscripts that we create
that summarize our research results.
3. Complete a short electronic project evaluation questionnaire
at the end of the exchange period.
4. Respond to weekly+ questions and suggestions from
an "exchange facilitator," concerning your perceptions of the
communication and ways that it could be improved upon,
both during and immediately following communication with
the students and their teachers.
5. Help the teacher to compose a one-page summary of your
project (to post on the Internet for other educators to use)
in the two weeks immediately following the exchange period,
using the category template that we supply electronically.
Scheduling
Each SME-classroom team in this phase of the Emissary project will
arrange its own communication schedule according to your availability and
curricular considerations, such as when the unit(s) that concern your
area(s) of expertise will be explored in the classroom. Each exchange will
begin with approximately two weeks of SME - teacher (only)
communication, so that the details of the exchange can be collaboratively
planned before the students begin communicating with you. Average
exchange periods will probably range in duration from 2 - 10 weeks.
The Application Process
To volunteer to serve as a subject matter expert for the Electronic
Emissary project, we request that you Telnet to the Texas Center for
Educational Technology's server, and fill out an application online. To do
that, please follow these steps:
1. Get to the "system prompt" in your Internet account. (If you don't
know how to do this, please ask the folks in your Computer Center to help
you.)
2. Type this at the system prompt:
telnet tcet.unt.edu ...and then press the key.
3. You will then be connected to the TCET server. When you see the
login: prompt, type:
sme ...and then press the key.
4. You will then see a menu of options. Select the one that is labeled
"Subject Matter Expert."
5. Follow the instructions on the screen, providing all of the
information that is requested.
6. Since we are still beta-testing this interactive software, if you
encounter problems, please contact the Emissary's programmer, Greg Jones,
at:
gjones[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tenet.edu
==> PLEASE RESPOND ASAP; the next set of teacher-SME
==> pairs will be formed beginning on 3/28/94.
After you have completed the application online, it will be stored in the
Emissary database. As support for more matches becomes available to the
project, teachers wanting their students to correspond with a subject
matter expert will be permitted to Telnet to the database and search it
for a subject matter expert who can address their students' content
information needs. They will be able to read all of the information that
you supply about yourself *except* for your email address, street address,
or telephone number(s), so that you will not be inundated with requests
from classrooms.
When a teacher requests that a match be made with you, an Emissary staff
person (an "electronic facilitator") will contact you by email. S/he will
ask you whether you are available and interested in communicating about
the topic at the time that the teacher has specified. If so, a special
account on the TCET server will be set up as the Internet address to which
everyone on your team (you, the teacher, the students, and the
facilitator) will mail your messages. Emailing to this address will cause
a program that we have created to execute that will automatically generate
copies of all of the messages exchanged among the members of your team.
The log of these messages will be kept for us to study as part of our
research about adults and children using electronic mail to teach and
learn asynchronously. The program will then automatically forward the
students' and teacher's messages to you, and your messages to the teacher
and students.
The Future
We hope to continue to expand the numbers of classrooms and subject
matter experts that are "matched" with the Emissary's services as the
semesters pass. Each semester, we will seek support for this purpose,
making groups of 10 - 40 "matches" available as each proposal is funded.
We will also continue to add to our database of subject matter expert
volunteers. The availability of these opportunities will be made known to
both SMEs and classroom teachers via periodic newsgroup and
LISTSERV postings. Participating classrooms will be selected on a "first
come, first served" basis. SME volunteer applications will be welcome at
any time.
Since we are presently staffed rather meagerly, we will only be able to
"match" a relatively small number of SME/classroom teams at this time.
We hope, therefore, that we can retain your application for use as the
project grows during the next few years (keeping fingers crossed, of
course, that we are able to obtain funding). If you are *not*
willing for your application to be made available in later years,
please make sure that you include a statement of that preference in the
text of your application.
Future Communications
**Due to the unusually (wonderfully!) large volume of potential SMEs for
this project, please do not be disappointed if we cannot "match" you with
a classroom right away.** Also, please forgive us in advance for not
writing to acknowledge receipt of your completed application. We would
love to be able to respond to each of your applications individually, but
time does not permit what hospitality and gratitude would recommend.
Please know how *very* much we appreciate your willingness to help with
this volunteer effort! You are making a direct and meaningful contribution
to the education of young people by offering to share your time and
expertise. Please accept our heartfelt thanks for this gesture.
- - - - - -
Judi Harris
Electronic Emissary Project Director
University of Texas at Austin & Texas Center for Educational Technology
jbharris[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tenet.edu
***---------------------> End of Original Mail
Subject: Adam's off ox
My earliest attestation of not knowing something from an off-ox is, in fact, n
ot to Adam's.It is from George W. Harris' Sut Lovingood; Yarns Spun by a
Nat'ral Born Durn'd Fool, etc..., New York, 1867, cited in American Proverbs
and Proverbial Phrases 1820-1880, A. Taylor and B.J. Whiting, Belknap Press,
Harvard, 1958, p. 273 'I didn;t know hit from Beltashazur's off ox.'
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 08:50:43 EST
From: David Bergdahl
Subject: HEL-L
Ohio University Electronic Communication
Date: 13-Mar-1994 08:47am EST
To: Remote Addressee ( _MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU )
From: David Bergdahl Dept: English
BERGDAHL Tel No: (614) 593-2783
Subject: HEL-L
Recently here or on LINGUIST I saw a notice about a history of the English
language list, HEL-L, but I must have copied the address wrong because the
listserv doesn't seem to exist. I had copied
listproc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ebbs.english.vt.edu
but the ebbs is wrong. Anybody remember seeing that notice and can help me out?
Thanks.
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Received: 13-Mar-1994 08:50am
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 14:43:08 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
I think there is certaily an "ear dialect" that appears in films and may
have its origins in live stage performances or in fiction and other
textual sources. I can't prove it yet.
Has anyone noticed that some African American authors use eye-dialect
and other distancing features wen depicting black characters? See
Richard Wright in "Almos' a Man." Here *damn* is spelled "dam'".
I think Langston Hughes does it sometimes.
Question: in *The Color Purple,* Alice Walker's narrator, Cielie, uses
"us" in subject position. It is no accident or unconscious thing, for
antother character tries to get Celie to change to "we." It bothers me,
probably because I have never encountered it except in "Pogo Possum,"
but I don't trust my instincts much wen it comes to VBE or plantations
southern or Gullah, having had very little contact with any of them and
not being familiar with all the scholarship. Have any of you who are
speakers or students of VBE or similar southern lects ever seen or heard
an actual attestation of nominal "us"? I f you have, are the only
exampes you know from Gullah speakers (or Carribean creoles), or is it more
widespread? In the U.S.?
Second question, to people with same expertise: if you have seen the
film by the same title, what is your reaction to the varieties of English
produced in that film?
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 14:46:37 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
Someone mentioned the way l"earl dialect" focuses on salient features
that people are familiar with. See the c. 1940 film "Sargeant York"
with Gary Cooper. Everyone in York's upland Tennessee hometown uses
categorical a-prefixing; i don't believeyou everhear a progressive
without the prefix. If that was ever categorical in Appalachian speech
I'll eat my hat.
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 17:03:57 CST
From: salikoko mufwene
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
In Message Sun, 13 Mar 1994 14:43:08 -0600, mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uxa.ecn.bgu.edu writes:
>Have any of you who are
>speakers or students of VBE or similar southern lects ever seen or heard
>an actual attestation of nominal "us"? I f you have, are the only
>exampes you know from Gullah speakers (or Carribean creoles), or is it more
>widespread? In the U.S.?
In 1989 I was presenting a paper on personal pronouns in creoles and
claimed that Gullah does not use "us" in the subject/nominative function.
Two people in the audience, one of whom was William Stewart, the other was
Anette Kashif (then at Howard), claimed they have heard or read it. I
haven't come across it yet. Personal pronouns are even more invariant in
Caribbean English creoles. I don't think "us" alternates with "we" in them,
but I am ready for more surprises, for which I'll be grateful.
Sali.
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Linguistics, U. of Chicago
s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu
312-702-8531
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 19:39:00 CDT
From: Beth Lee Simon
Subject: you all singular--north Texas
I just got back from the Concordia Writers Conference. Two of the writers,
from U North TX, have "you all" as singular. "So Scott," I said, "tell me
what's plural." "All you all."
Then checked with another north Texan (Denton). You all singular; all you
all, plural.
Beth Simon
blsimon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]macc.wisc.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 20:34:39 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: HEL-L
>listproc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ebbs.english.vt.edu
>
>but the ebbs is wrong. Anybody remember seeing that notice and can help me out?
That's the right address. What happened when you tried it?
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 20:41:36 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
> not being familiar with all the scholarship. Have any of you who are
> speakers or students of VBE or similar southern lects ever seen or heard
> an actual attestation of nominal "us"? I f you have, are the only
> exampes you know from Gullah speakers (or Carribean creoles), or is it more
> widespread? In the U.S.?
Yes, I've heard it a few times in taped interviews with non-Gullah speakers.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 12 Mar 1994 to 13 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 8 messages totalling 165 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Adam's Off Ox
2. Nominative Us
3. Conscious Learning of Accent (5)
4. Actors & Accent
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 08:05:33 -0600
From: Larry Davis
Subject: Adam's Off Ox
Mathews's DICTIONARY OF AMERICANISMS (p. 1148) does list ADAM'S OFF OX as the
following:
"a stubborn, clumsy, unmanageable person, _colloq_."
The quotations are as follows:
"1848 Lowell BIGELOW P. I Ser. 90 Ezto the answerin' o' questions, I'm an off
ox at bein' druv. 1903 D.N. II 352 off ox, n. One who is usually on the
opposite side of a popular movement."
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 08:50:06 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Nominative Us
Having said last night that I had run across a few samples of nominative
us in taped speech, I started looking for the sources this morning and
am beginning to think I dreamed them. I have it stuck in my not-always-
reliable brain that I noticed nominative us while working on something
unrelated to pronouns. The reason I remember it is that I was surprised.
Surely I made a note of it somewhere other than in my brain, but I can't
find any such note. And I really don't want to devote all of Spring Break
to chasing what may turn out to be a non-existent form. Surely I wasn't
thinking last night of objective we -- which I don't think would have
surprised me since that's an often-cited feature of Gullah. I guess the
point of this posting is to say that until I find some kind of confirmation
for what I said last night about nominative us, ignore it.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 09:15:32 EST
From: Bruce Southard
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
Many years ago as a Peace Corps English teacher in the Philippines, I
suddenly became conscious that I was surrounded by a great number of
teenage Filipinos who sounded as if they came from the Texas Panhandle.
In learning English, they had copied my West Texas sounds. Not wanting
to burden them with the complications that a Texas accent would pose for
a Filipino, I consciously tried to change my vowel patterns in
particular. As a result, I think that I've ended up with an accent
modeled after some subconscious "standard" that probably exists nowhere
except in the mind of a once-young displaced Texan. I don't know whether
this constitutes "conscious learning of accent" in the sense of Tim
Fraser's original inquiry, but I certainly made the choice to change my
speech in a particular direction.
BRUCE SOUTHARD
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
ENSOUTHA[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ECUVM1
ENSOUTHA[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ECUVM.CIS.ECU.EDU
919-757-6041
919-757-4889 (FAX)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 10:24:58 EST
From: Sonja Lanehart
Subject: Re: Actors & Accent
I have members of my family that use "us" instead of "we". My family is
from Louisiana and it is not uncommon for me to hear it used. I don't
recall right now if I hear or have heard whites use it. So, when Celie
used "us" in "The Color Purple", I just thought of it as natural because
it is a part of the speech of some in my family. By the way, also in that
scene about language, Celie makes an interesting comment in response:
"Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel
peculiar to your mind."
Sonja Lanehart, University of Michigan, English
r2sll1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]akronvm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vm1.cc.uakron.edu OR
Sonja.Lanehart[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]um.cc.umich.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 10:02:35 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
While working in upstate NY one summer when I was in college, I changed
my pronunciation of the name Karen from [ke...] to [kE...] because I was
getting tired of the laughter from the teenagers in the water-skiing
class every time I spoke to Karen. Interestingly, that change has stuck
with me for Karen, Mary, dairy, etc. except that I found myself saying
[ker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]n] again not long ago when talking to my mother about a former
neighbor of that name -- somebody I had always called [ker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]n] since I
had known her before my shift to [kEr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]n].
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 11:39:01 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
I consider myself to be bidialectal to a certain degree, using a number
of nonstandard features when talking to certain family members and
friends that I wouldn't use when talking to other friends and
colleagues. This came in quite handy when doing fieldwork and it's
interesting to hear myself on the tapes. I sometimes get them confused,
however. I especially notice it when I come out with a double negative,
ain't, etc. in talking to co-workers in the LAMSAS office. Despite our
stated belief in linguistic pluralism, it's sort of embarrassing. Less
frequently, I notice that I've used a very academic-sounding
construction at home. I don't know if it occurs less, or if I just
notice it less.
BTW, my mother calls my best friend /ker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]n/, but I never have. She was
born in rural west Georgia, I was born in Atlanta, and I always use her as
an example of the 3-way split for Mary, merry, and marry.
My english pronunciation of enchilada is with /ae/.
Ellen Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
writing today from GURT in DC
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 10:58:34 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
Ellen Johnson's pronunciation of with /ae/ is interesting to
me, since when I am subliminally aware of /EN/-speakers' vowel, I often
first translate it mentally into /ae/, and then do a processing correction
on the morpheme identification, e.g. /pEn/ --> {PAN} --> {PEN}.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 19:08:13 EST
From: BERGDAHL%A1.OUVAX.mrgate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
From: NAME: David Bergdahl
FUNC: English
TEL: (614) 593-2783
To: NAME: MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"
This is only tangential to the question of whether dialect features may be
unlearned or replaced, but I was on a Fulbright to Goettingen in the mid-70's
and a colleague and a friend, Armin Paul Frank, had a slight stutter in German
which was missing in English. I was reminded of this by Don Lance's comment
that he was able to do [E]_____{nasal} in Spanish with more regularity than in
English. But the dark side of my anecdote is that when I last saw Armin 15
years ago he had begun to stutter in English too. Now my analysis of this is
that like Don he had learned a completely new set of habits when he learned
English, but as they became automatic [?and transferred to a different brain
area?] the stutter returned. The occasion was my wife's funeral, so that the
emotional content may have contributed--he'd just driven from State College PA
to attend--but I suspect that automaticity had a lot to do with it.
The lesson is, keep learning a new language? :-)
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 13 Mar 1994 to 14 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 10 messages totalling 251 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Conscious Learning of Accent (6)
2. Nominative Us
3. French propose law to ban English
4. French Linguistic Legislation & Claude Hagege (2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:11:33 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
When I say 'enchilada' with [i] in the second syllable and voiced fricative for
the last consonant, [E] is the "natural" initial vowel, but if I anglicize the
rest of the word the initial vowel has to be [I]. So, Rudy, if you'll focus
on the last three syllables the first one might come out with the Spanish
vowel. You might see what you say when ordering food in a Mexican restaurante.
I'm always a bit amused when people employ their "French" pronunciation rules
for the first syllable of 'enchilada'. I suspect that they are among those
who seem to think that Mexican food has to give one indigestion. Mexican
food cooked slowly and carefully by abuelitas sits well in my innards, but
the food in gringo places like Taco Bell always gives me indigestion.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:28:31 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
David Bergdahl's comment about German --------------------
When I was in Germany in 1978-79 and trying to develop some fluency in that
language I would often get interference from vague memories of Old English
forms, never from my "other" language. But when I tried to speak Spanish
in Germany I'd have awkward interference from my weak German. It felt
as if I didn't have full control over what part of the brain I needed to
access. I spent a couple of weeks in Spain, where my Spanish fluency
returned. In Barcelona I had occasion to use German as well as Spanish and
and English. That brief experience separated the langauges for me and I had
much less trouble thereafter, though it was much harder to speak Spanish in
Germany than in Spain. Several times Spaniards asked me "Es usted Americano?"
My response was, "Si, soy tejano; hablo mejicano." That satisfied them.
I was never really sure whether they heard some gringuismo in my phonology or
whether they primarily noticed that it wasn't castellano. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 09:06:52 MET-1
From: "E.W. Schneider"
Subject: Nominative Us
There is quite strong evidence for nominative *us* in Rawick`s
ex-slave narratives (see my *American Earlier Black English*,
Alabama UP 1989, pp. 171, 176-8, 242-5), which in my sample comes up
more frequently than standard *we* and is regionally concentrated in
the relatively southern range of states (SC-NC-GA-AL-MS-TX) but
does not occur in NC-TN-AK-MO. The form is remarkable because it is
attested but clearly rare and marginal. It looks like an obvious
creolism, and probably it is, but then Gullah has invariant *we*
instead, and so do practically all of the Caribbean creoles which are
possibly related to AAVE (see the evidence on p. 94 of my article in
*English World-Wide* 11 (1990). If anybody has a convincing
explanation of the genesis of this usage, I`d be very intereted in seeing
it.
Best, Edgar
Edgar W. Schneider
ewschnei[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]alf4.ngate.uni-regensburg.de
University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany
phone (int. line)-49-941-9433470
fax (int. line)-49-941-9434992
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 02:11:38 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
Don,
I think you're right about getting the first vowel right in
if I focus on producing an eth in the last syllable; it is hard to switch
codes within the word! There seems to be an integrity about the encoding of
the word which resists such changes.
Rudy
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 07:28:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
Don Lance's Spanish-German adventures are interesting. When I first began
learning Polish in the early 70's (in Poland), I took a trip to Germany (with
fair German and so-so Spanish already implanted). While in Germany, I met a
Spanish professor and tried to haul out the tongue only to find it full of
Polish. Not a trace of Polish in my German however.
Does anyone out there have any references to any studies on the influence of
2nd, 3rd, 4th langauges on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc... languages?
Hasta widzenia,
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 12:23:19 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
My French was (and is) much better than my German, but when I went to
Switzerland after a week in Bamberg, Germany and tried to speak French I
could do so only with the utmost difficulty. It just seemed too much for
my brain to handle.
Upon reflecting on my "bidialectalism", if it can be called that, it is
interesting that both dialects were acquired. I was conscious of my
changing speech, but I didn't consciously try to change particular
pronunciations. I grew up in a middle class, suburban family, though
neither of my parents has a college degree. The upper-middle-class/
academic dialect I acquired in school, while the more working class type
of speech was acquired throough interaction over the past 15 years with
neighbors, ex-in-laws, and speakers of BVE and rural white southern
dialects. My native dialect then has split off in two directions,
neither of which is identical to the speech of people who speak that
dialect natively. My most cultivated speech, for example, is different
from that of people who were born into what remains of the old plantation
aristocracy, and in my most vernacular style I never use a-prefixing or
invariant be, among other features.
Enough armchair theorizing and self-disclosure. The topic of
bidialectalism and code-switching between dialects is an interesting one
and I would welcome more discussion on it.
Ellen Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 15:22:50 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject: French propose law to ban English
On p. 1 of today's NYTimes (midwest edition) there's a story about
a proposed law banning all foreign words for which there is no local
French equivalent. The law is more sweeping than its predecessors,
and the government, according to the article, means business this time.
They've even got Claude Hagege behind it, which frankly surprises me
a bit, since I thought he was big on language variation. A "Delegation
for the French Language," appointed by the culture ministry, is supposed
to publish a dictionary of equivalent terms this week.
I've written to the French consul in Chicago to try to obtain a copy of
the dictionary. If anyone has info about this publication, or sees
it somewhere, let me know.
Dennis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 15:40:33 CST
From: Mike Picone
Subject: French Linguistic Legislation & Claude Hagege
Concerning Dennis Baron's remarks:
Claude Hagege, like many other French linguists, sees a place for linguistic
legislation when it comes to protecting French. In his case at least this
does not necessarily constitute chauvinism since he is consistent when it
comes to having recourse to the law to protect any
other endangered language. This does not mean that he is a purist, for the two
attitudes can be disassociated. Americans are incredulous at the thought that
French could be considered an endangered language, but the French don't see
it that way. Of course, it is not endangered in the current sense of that
term, whereby imminent extinction of a species is suggested, but it is
clearly on the retreat, and has been for some time, in its competition
with English. This is even true in former strongholds, like Africa.
Furthermore, regarding the penetration of French itself, one
must not underestimate the lingering force of Rene Etiemble's warning alarm
to France to the effect that French ways of thinking are at stake in the
loss of ground to anglicized vocabulary and morphosyntax. So to them it's
more than just a war of words. Of course, the issues are more complex than
that and lots, lots more can be said on this subject (and will be in my
forthcoming book, if I can stay away from e-mail long enough to finish it).
Don't forget that France has a history of "dirigisme linguistique" that is
practically as old as is modern French itself. The Academie francaise was
established in 1635. The Revolution liberated everything but the language:
"roi" became an outlaw word.
Anyway, updated lists of official replacement words are
printed in the Journal Officiel as a matter of public record when they
become law and are periodically compiled into a dictionary published by
the same concern. For example, publication no. 1468 (may 1989) _Dictionnaire
des neologismes officiels_.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
mpicone[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ua1vm.ua.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 16:26:52 -0800
From: ctlntt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU
Subject: Re: French Linguistic Legislation & Claude Hagege
Enfin, on realise qu'il faut bien stopper cette invasion de mots
etrangers, n'est-ce pas?
MMAzevedo
ctlntt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]violet.berkeley.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 21:45:39 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
In response to Dennis Preston's query re interaction of L2 and L3 etc,
I have never seen anything formal published on it, though it is a fascinating
issue in regard to the question of neural storage and access. The first and
only formal comment on it I heard was by the British linguist W. Stannard
Allen who gave a lecture in Istanbul in 1960 (reported to me), in which he
speculated that some people had two language "channels", one for L1 and the
other for L2...Ln. I've used this for years in lectures on bilingualism,
with anecdotes from my own and others' experiences. Allen qualified his
comment by indicating that the "Channel 2" applied to languages that the
speaker did not know well. I thought I had commented on the phenomenon on
ADS-L sometime back when discussing code-switching, but maybe I had just done
it in e-mailing Don Lance.
I seem to have 3 channels, one for English, one for Spanish, and one
for Lx, where the latter involves any language I don't know well. When I
lived in Turkey and traveled to Germany for summer vacation, I used to spend
the time going through Yugoslavia suppressing my Turkish and reviving my
German (both equally poor), and the reverse on the way back. Once, having
arrived in Austria, I encountered a man who saw my Turkish license plates and
asked in Turkish how long it had taken to get there; though I understood his
question perfectly, I could only answer in German. Years later, when I
started to study Chinese [I always recommend that anyone involved with L2
teaching should go through the process of learning another language every
5 years or so, to remember what it is like to be a student again], I was the
only person in the class who produced sentences in SOV order (Turkish is SOV,
but Chinese, like English, is predominantly SVO, so there should have been
no interference). When I took Korean lessons 5 years ago (it's time to start
another one -- the next will be ASL), I mainly had lexical interference from
Chinese, but that was because of the large number of Chinese loans, most of
which are pronounced markedly differently in Korean. I can't claim to have
achieved any real fluency in Korean, unfortunately.
Anybody have any more anecdotes?
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 14 Mar 1994 to 15 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 21 messages totalling 499 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Obliberate
2. French linguistic legislation (7)
3. A New Genitive Relative Pronoun? (5)
4. Conscious Learning of Accent (3)
5. Sports vocabulary and the French lexicon
6. French linguistic legislation chauvinism
7. French Linguistic Legislation & Claude Hagege
8. French Linguistic Legislation
9. la belle France
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 22:01:56 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Obliberate
All you fellow Southern regional language specialists out there:
Have any of you heard the pronunciation "obliberate" for ?
I know of 2 East Texans who quite independently have used this form, suggest-
ing that there is some common undercurrent from which it must have been
derived. It must be more than accident. The word is a rare one in ordinary
conversation, so it is not too likely to be encountered very often in whatever
pronunciation. Thanks,
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 00:42:01 -0500
From: "Gregory J. Pulliam"
Subject: French linguistic legislation
Regarding Mike Picone's point about the French perception that their ways
of thinking may be losing ground to anglo-style ways, well all I can say
is good riddance! ;-> Their condescending attitude toward tourists who
try to use French but screw it up seems to be unique in the world, and
probably accounts in large part for the ascendancy of English and Spanish,
whose speakers seem to think in ways that are much are accepting and
encouraging. One of the in-jokes on the new Star Trek series is that
French is a dead language in the 24th century. In all seriousness, it
does seem to me that if the French academy continues to prescribe usage, the
official and vernacular versions of the language are bound to diverge ever
more greatly, which could make official French a modern-day Latin.
GPulliam
humpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]minna.acc.iit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 08:23:34 EST
From: Wayne Glowka
Subject: A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
I'm signed off the list at the moment because I'll be on spring break after
I read this last paper, but I just ran across a genitive of *that* in the
paper of a fairly literate student. I read the sentence, paused, and then
understood the process at work:
Gaelic, o[r] Goidelic, is a Celtic language *thats* branches include
Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, and Breton.
I'm out of here, off to see blue bonnets and smell the limestone in Lone
Star beer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Wayne Glowka
Georgia College
Milledgeville, GA 31061
912-453-4222
wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:08:40 EST
From: BERGDAHL%A1.OUVAX.mrgate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: Re: A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
From: NAME: David Bergdahl
FUNC: English
TEL: (614) 593-2783
To: NAME: MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"
As an additional relative pronoun: like Wayne I was grading papers--and in a
middle-aged straight A student in a interpretation of fiction (sophomore) I
found 3-4 instances of "in which" as an all purpose rel pro.
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:15:51 EST
From: BERGDAHL%A1.OUVAX.mrgate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
From: NAME: David Bergdahl
FUNC: English
TEL: (614) 593-2783
To: NAME: MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu"
Rudy's anecdotes strike a familar cord, although I'm not as fluent in any
language: when I was on a Fulbright in Germany in '75/6 I relied heavily on my
German-speaking wife, but when I tried to access my year of college German I
kept coming up with Latin, from a semester of college study. Definitely there
must be a brain area for little-used languages! :-) In '88 when I was on an
exchange with the University of Toulouse I kept remembering German, although I
had studied French from grades 7-10 and for 2 yrs in college! The year of
living in Germany--and using it (or at least hearing it) with my wife's
family--must have switched it to L2 status!
Incidentally, my daughter Erika, who was placed in a 2nd grade classroom in
Goettingen, achieved native speaker competence (in Kinderdeutsch at least!) by
the time we'd left. Interestingly, her accent has degraded over the years and
now she speaks German with a decidedly American accent. She's gone on to study
French and Italian in h.s. and college and learned Spanish and Portuguese on her
own: she's convinved that the FL-exposure is what's made it easy for her to
learn languages.
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens BERGDAHL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:24:38 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
A word in defense of French attitudes, and against the old canard (surely
we don't have to say "duck") about the impoliteness of the French to those
who try to speak their language. I have travelled in France now and then
over thirty years, and never found anything but courtesy, at least as
far as language goes. And this is true of Paris and the countryside both.
People have helped me, tried to understand, smiled at my more risible
mistakes (as we do at learning-English, ask any teacher), and offered
correct or at least usable forms. Maybe what some of the disgruntled
comments of tourists really mean is that English is far less current and
useful in France than it is in Holland, Germany or Scandinavia --- I
know in Holland you have to beg people to speak Dutch to you. And the
French do speak French persistently --- is it that we find it so hard
to forgive, their uncomfortable (to us) resistance to Imperial Amerenglish?
They also speak French in Haiti (and thus vividly and persistently in
New York, where there are radio stations that keep the language current
and vivid) and in Africa and in islands here and there. And there is
a great French speaking nation a morning's drive north of me, whose
literature is elaborate. I wouldn't drag out the funeral wreaths just yet.
Robert Kelly / kelly[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]levy.bard.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 08:47:00 CDT
From: Beth Lee Simon
Subject: Sports vocabulary and the French lexicon
From: IN%"CREWRT-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIZZOU1.missouri.edu" "Creative Writing in Education
for Teachers and Students"
To: Multiple recipients of list CREWRT-L
Subject: Re: You want an example of power?
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: Creative Writing in Education for Teachers and Students
Poster: John Oughton
Subject: Re: You want an example of power?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somebody in France (a committee of the Academie Francaise?) used to
publish an anual list of foreign words that were to be, or especially were
not to be, allowed into French.
My favourite was one that tried to address the mounting interest in
baseball in France. Instead of "le catcher," for example, loyal French
people were enjoined to say "L'attrapeur des balles..."
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:25:38 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
I have never encountered anything but kindness and encouragement when
speaking my very bad French in France.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 10:42:23 -0500
From: "William A. Kretzschmar, Jr."
Subject: French linguistic legislation chauvinism
My spouse and I love Paris, and are looking forward to going once more
next month for the ACH/ALLC conference, but she has had terrible trouble
there when she tries to speak French. The most vivid recent example was
the ticket lady in the Orangerie; Claudia got a terrible scowl for asking
about museum tickets. I've never had a problem, or even a scowl. The
only thing close was when I went to ask about Customs in the basement of
the Gallerie Lafayette: the first person I talked to didn't know the
answer to my question (about duties on artworks) and called over her
colleague, who spoke some English, on grounds that I must not be asking
the question right---the colleague, who had overheard the entire exchange,
said that my French was fine and that she didn't know the answer to my
question either! The answer, by the way, is that there is no US duty on
original artworks.
******************************************************************************
Bill Kretzschmar Phone: 706-542-2246
Dept. of English FAX: 706-542-2181
University of Georgia Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hyde.park.uga.edu
Athens, GA 30602-6205 Bitnet: wakjengl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:52:25 CST
From: salikoko mufwene
Subject: Re: French Linguistic Legislation & Claude Hagege
In Message Tue, 15 Mar 1994 16:26:52 -0800, ctlntt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]violet.berkeley.edu writes:
>Enfin, on realise qu'il faut bien stopper cette invasion de mots
>etrangers, n'est-ce pas?
Il ferait bien plaisir a l'Academie Francaise d'eliminer le verbe
"stopper" sans doute, et peut-etre aussi cet usage anglophone(?) de
"realiser"!
Sali.
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Linguistics, U. of Chicago
s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu
312-702-8531
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 11:09:00 EST
From: "Mary.Ojibway" <20676MKB[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: French linguistic legislation
I hate to add fuel to the fire but my limited experience in France was
negative as well. When I attempted to speak French, I was ridiculed. When I
did not attempt to speak French, I was ridiculed for not giving it a try. When
I broke down and attempted to ask directions in German (when neither French,
English, nor Spanish was responded to) I was spat upon! I did, however, find
the immigrant population of Africans and Turks to be quite sympathetic and
helpful. Not to say that lots of French folks aren't wonderful. I simply had a
bad experience in 1978 and have never been back.
Kate Ojibway
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:36:03 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
David Bergdahl's comment about his daughter reminds me of the interesting
statistic published by MLA a few years ago that showed a strong correlation
between years of FL study and SAT grades.
Thanks for the Lx-channel anecdote, David. Anybody have any more?
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 11:45:02 -0600
From: Larry Davis
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
Like a number of people on this list, my experiences in France, in Paris and
in other places as well, have been very positive. Certainly more so than in
New York during the ADS festivities. I recall that the French consulate in
Chicago once sent one of its employees out into the Loop asking, in French, for
help to the nearest hospital. She was ignored (and occasionally abused) for
well over an hour before someone thought to point her out to a police officer
who at least recognized the language she was speaking and called her superiors
who in turn called the consulate. Can some of the Francophobes beat that one?
I am not in favor of lingustic legislation, although it never works anyway,
but do indeed feel sympathy for folks who would like to stop American cultural
imperialism. They can't of course, but I feel for them.
Larry Davis
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 09:58:40 PST
From: Ed Finegan
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
The story provided by Larry Davis is wonderful, and I have none to beat it.
I did want to say, though, that I had one bad experience in Paris in 1971 and
resolved not to go back. But I did of course, in 1986, and I had a far more
positive experience, without I must confess a concomitant increase in my
French skills. At first I wondered what had changed in France? What an
improvement in the French! Then I wondered what had changed in me.
Ed Finegan
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 12:54:25 -0600
From: Charles F Juengling-2
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
On Wed, 16 Mar 1994, Gregory J. Pulliam wrote:
> Regarding Mike Picone's point about the French perception that their ways
> of thinking may be losing ground to anglo-style ways, well all I can say
> is good riddance! ;-> Their condescending attitude toward tourists who
> try to use French but screw it up seems to be unique in the world, and
> probably accounts in large part for the ascendancy of English and Spanish,
> whose speakers seem to think in ways that are much are accepting and
> encouraging. One of the in-jokes on the new Star Trek series is that
> French is a dead language in the 24th century.
The real joke is when DATA informs the crew, much to Picard's ire, that
French was a relatively minor/ unimportant language!
In all seriousness, it
> does seem to me that if the French academy continues to prescribe usage, the
> official and vernacular versions of the language are bound to diverge ever
> more greatly, which could make official French a modern-day Latin.
> GPulliam
> humpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]minna.acc.iit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 12:16:28 CST
From: Mike Picone
Subject: French Linguistic Legislation
Some more thoughts in reaction to previous comments on this subject:
Contrary to popular belief, linguistic legislation in not always an
exercise in futility. This is one of the things that Claude Hagege argues
forcefully. The present English-only controversy in America certainly
has serious implications for administration and education in various parts
of the country, and the policies set will have real consequences. This is
the first time modern America is having to face this kind of situation.
In most parts of the world, however, the presence of competing languages
is a longstanding reality that, like everything else that is social,
inevitably enters into the political arena and becomes
the target of legislation. As in
many other things linguistic, American myopia leads many of us to dismiss
linguistic legislation, but the truth is it has been around for a very long
time and has changed the course of many a language.
Now, as to the efficacy of attempting to inforce specific vocabulary
replacements in a modern, international environment where it is hard to keep
English out, success will be, at best, mitigated. Even here, however, there
are more successful cases than some would make us believe. It depends, too,
on the register one is operating in. Computer specialists in France continue
to use a lot of English vocabulary, but replacement terms like _informatique_
`computer science', _logiciel_ `software', _materiel_ `hardware', _lecteur_
`drive', etc. have been quite successful in popular usage.
The French can be very rude to Americans who don't speak French well. True
enough. They can also be equally rude to fellow Frenchmen who speak French
most eloquantly. The point is that rudeness can be misinterpreted to be a
means of singling out Americans for abuse when this may not be the case at
all. My situation in France was not typical of the tourist because I speak
French well and resided there for almost nine years. It should be noted,
however, that during that entire period of time, I can count on one hand the
number of times that I was given any kind of abuse for being an American.
Still, it cannot be denied that the French feel (and have been taught to feel)
that there language has special merit. It is more than just a utlilitarian
means of communicating. For a period of about ten years, the most widely
watched TV show in France was "Apostrophe," a sort of forum for authors of
books to get together and talk and debate (it finally went off the air, still
at the pinacle of the ratings). People didn't watch it just because they were
interested in books, but because they took such pleasure in witnessing
the skillful manipulation of the language and the artful exchange of
conversation that was almost always a hallmark of that show.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 14:54:13 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject: la belle France
Funny how my request for information triggered an outpouring of good/
bad French stories, all of which point to the cultural power France
still holds in our own, poor, colonial estimation.
My own experience in France was mixed. I was last there on a Fulbright
in 78-79, in Poitiers. Michelin gives Poitiers 2 hours. I was there
for 10 months. Get it?
I've always read French well, never spoke it too well, and that was never
much of a problem. But I clearly resented French when I first got there.
In a fog of jet lag and culture shock for a month, aided by the doldrums
of a university strike that delayed the start of the school year for a
few weeks, I finally had a nightmare in which I was speaking perfect
French -- and couldn't understand a thing I was saying.
I had a little trouble with weights and measures. Intent on fixing
spinach salad for the three of us, my first experience at the
open air marche was a disaster. After a struggle to get a clerk's
attention I hastily ordered a kilo of spinach and got
enough greens to stuff a good-sized pillow. Not wanting to give up
the clerk's attention while I recalibrated, I downsized my mushroom
order and asked for `un quart de champignons,' unaware that while
spinach went by the kilo, mushrooms were sold by the pound.
My three ounces of mushrooms were a sorry sight next to all that
spinach. That night we ate out.
I never did understand the meteo, the weather report. I had converted
fahrenheit to centigrade often enough in physics class in high school,
but I spent the year never knowing the ambient temperature, and dressing
my daughter for school by sticking my head out the window.
Speaking of school, my daughter attended sixth grade in Poitiers (there
are no English schools there). There she got in trouble when she told
the teacher there were 7 continents (the French count only 5). She
took English as her foreign language, and got into trouble there because
her teacher, who had little English herself, insisted that the English
for numero de telephone was number phone. When Cordelia told her the
proper phrase was phone number, the teacher got mad. She told my
daughter that it might be phone number in the US, but in her class they
spoke British English, and in British English the expression was certainly
number phone.
Some things are not worth fighting your child's teacher for.
Bonne chance, mecs.
denis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 22:49:28 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
On Tue, 15 Mar 1994, Donald M. Lance wrote:
> in Germany I'd have awkward interference from my weak German. It felt
> as if I didn't have full control over what part of the brain I needed to
> access.
I'm trying to learn Spanish right now and keep getting interference from
French, even though I have hardly used it since minoring in it 30 yrs ago.
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 16:18:44 EST
From: Larry Horn
Subject: Re: A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
Actually, there was quite a flurry of discussion on the emergence of 'thats'
as a dialectally attested form, and to what extent this demonstrates the
pronominal, as opposed to complementizer, nature of 'that'. (This exchange
was on Linguist List, not here on ADS.) The respondents, as I
recall (this was back in Sept. 1991), claimed to have come across 'thats' in
the UK (North London, Scotland, and points in between) and in the U.S.,
although I'm not sure what the geographic distribution is on this side of the
pond. (It wasn't heard around New York, and I'd never come across it since
myself, but maybe it is, as Wayne's posting suggests, an innovative feature.)
Posters agreed that it doesn't occur as a relative on plural nominals (*the
books thats covers are torn) or after a preposition in a pied piping
environment, although the latter might simply indicate a conflict in register.
--Larry
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 18:35:00 -0400
From: tthonus
Subject: Re: A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
Dave Bergdahl comments on "in which" as an "all-purpose relative
pronoun." I recently wrote a paper for a syntax class on the phenomenon
based on an analysis of 30 written sentences. The majority of them
contained relativization of what Prideaux and Baker (1986) term the "OO
type (e.g. "The dog chased the man [that the cat bit]). I concluded this
way: "The writers of *in which can have it all: an air of formality,
an overt WH-relative surface form generalizable to all
non-dative contexts, a stranded rather than piped preposition, and the
simplicity of _that_ syntactic patterning." Interested ADS-L readers
may also be interested in Riley and Parker (1986) and Montgomery and
Bailey (1991), both published in _American Speech_. I think we're
witnessing language change in progress.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 20:50:53 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
Pardon my obtuseness, but being too lazy (Spring fever) to check on the
references in Am.Speech, I'm not quite clear: Do you mean you find people
writing/saying "The dog chased the man in which the cat bit"? That would
certainly have to have an asterisk in front of it for me. I don't even
think I could make sense of it.
It is, of course, an interesting question whether is strictly
a COMP, as Chomskyan analysis demonstrates quite nicely, or whether we are
to believe the wrong-headed intuition of most traditional and structuralist
grammarians who interpret it as a relative pronoun. We know, of course, that
that is how language changes: people come to reinterpret things in particular
contexts in different ways, and they thereby become different things. Thus
thinking makes it so. A form like "thats" looks like pretty good evidence.
[NB: that doesn't make me happy with Quirk et al.'s interpreting gerunds as
participles, however].
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 15 Mar 1994 to 16 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 3 messages totalling 66 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. French linguistic legislation
2. A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
3. New Genitive Pronoun?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 00:14:50 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
On several short trips to France in 1978/79 I had only one sorta negative
experience. I'd come in from London and had no idea where the station for
trains to Germany was. The lady in the info booth was rather short with me
when I failed to understand that it was really only a short distance away.
It was raining hard outside, in late December, with a bad cold front on
the way, so grumpiness was not unexpected. Absolutely no other bad
experiences. A couple of times French people recognized my American shoes
and initiated a conversation in English. My mind goes blank when I try
to remember all that French I recognize in print, so I used only English.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 17:28:19 +0700
From: Gwyn Williams
Subject: Re: A New Genitive Relative Pronoun?
On Wed, 16 Mar 1994, Wayne Glowka wrote:
> I'm signed off the list at the moment because I'll be on spring break after
> I read this last paper, but I just ran across a genitive of *that* in the
> paper of a fairly literate student. I read the sentence, paused, and then
> understood the process at work:
>
> Gaelic, o[r] Goidelic, is a Celtic language *thats* branches include
> Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, and Breton.
Wasn't something like this discussed on Linguist List last year?
Gwyn
Bangkok
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 18:37:45 EST
From: Michael Montgomery
Subject: New Genitive Pronoun?
I would like to raise a query and propose a dissent to Larry Horn's
characterization of the genitive relative pronoun _thats_ being a new or
emerging form. The form as cited by Wayne Glowka is striking to many of
us because it appears in writing, and it may be a form that isn't noticed
by many until it does appear there. I have heard the form infrequently,
but once a year or so, over at least the past decade, and my suspicion
is that either it has been in vernacular English for quite sometime or
that it crops up sporadically by analogy to _whose_. I don't think it
is by any means new, and the discussion a couple of years ago on the
Linguist List, when people in disparate locations attested it, is consis-
tent with this contention. From time to time I notice a form or usage
that seems entirely novel to me, only to discover that it is common in
the speech around me (and sometimes that I use it myself!). We must
be very careful in assuming something is new by virtue of our paying
notice to it for the first time. There is such a thing as an "observer's
illusion" as well as the better-known "observer's paradox." Are there
other examples of this phenomenon that come to mind of ADSers?
Wonder if DARE has any citations?
Peace, Michael Montgomery
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 16 Mar 1994 to 17 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 3 messages totalling 63 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. poof!
2. The French Connection
3. New Genitive Pronoun?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 1994 23:48:51 -0500
From: "Gregory J. Pulliam"
Subject: poof!
I've encountered a new command meaning _get lost_ from my pre-adolescent
stepson who's enrolled in public schools in Oak Park, adjacent to the far
west side of Chicago. What the boys say is "Poof!" sometimes followed by
"Get the steppin'" but always (apparently, or so he says) accompanied by
a hand gesture which consists of a fist-to-fully-extended-fingers motion
concurrent with the word "Poof!" I suspect it's been handed down from the
older boys, perhaps gang-types. The again perhaps not. Any thots or citations?
Also, francophiles, please forgive my little tease the other day about the
French linguistic legislation. I'm not a francophobe. I was jesting, albeit
poorly perhaps, in the Twain tradition of baiting the French. BTW, if you've
seen the latest on heart disease rates in France, perhaps due to their intake
of red wine along with all those high-fat meals, you do have to wonder if
maybe the French will be the first nation ever to outlive its language and
culture....don't you? ;-)
GPulliam
humpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]minna.acc.iit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 00:13:07 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: The French Connection
This may close out the discussion of experiences with French linguistic
attitudes, but it may be that reactions to them are as much a reflection on
American culture as anything. I shared Dennis Baron's e-note with a Chinese
former student who spent a couple of years working in Nice for IBM, and who
knew no French on arrival. She said it was interesting to discover how
much information can be exchanged without reliance on verbalization, and
though she had some problems and experienced some frustration, she was
amazed by the negativism expressed by her American colleeagues, which seemed
to her very much out of proportion to their actual experiences. I had
heard very negative experiences from friends about their communication
encounters in France, and so avoided going there for years, but on the
several occasions that I have been in France, I have had only pleasant
experiences. But even if I had had "negative" experiences, I wonder it my
own reaction to them would not have been a reflection of my own culture?
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 15:57:12 -0500
From: Cathy Ball
Subject: Re: New Genitive Pronoun?
Michael Montgomery writes: 'We must be very careful in assuming something is new
by virtue of our paying
notice to it for the first time.'
Well said, Michael! I recall the discussion on LINGUIST of nominative
pronouns in accusative conjunctions occasioned by Bill Clinton's speech
(Give AL Gore and I a chance, or something like that), where a number of
people thought they had only just started hearing this and it has in fact
been around for at least 300 years, if not longer ...
-- Cathy Ball (cball[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]guvax.georgetown.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 17 Mar 1994 to 18 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 11 messages totalling 241 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. New Genitive Pronoun?
2. COOL /u/ or /y/ (2)
3. journalist seeks help (2)
4. Conscious Learning of Accent
5. Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/ (4)
6. Re-sending Bounced Message on /aey/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 00:48:09 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: New Genitive Pronoun?
Re Michael Montgomery's comment on "new" items. Remember that Walter Avis
reported upland South Carolinians claiming tht 'tow sack' was a new term
that was competing with 'croker sack'. Yes, we must be watchful that we
don't confuse "first time I heered it" with "it's brand-spankin new."
I've gotten genitive 'thats' on student essays at least once, maybe twice
in a third of a century. I've heard it too, rarely. But more and more I
hear structures like "He was telling his parents about the party, which he
likes to tease them that way. They're suspicious that he boozes."
I can't recall the sentence with the all-purpose 'which'
conjunction I heard just yesterday, a beaut, which I wouldn't know what to
call it, but I recognize it when I hear it but don't think I'd ever write
it. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 07:27:59 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: COOL /u/ or /y/
On David Bergdahl's note about raising /E/ to /e/ before esh, so
"Special" = "spatial." Note Dan Rather's pron. of "national."
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 07:36:59 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: journalist seeks help
On Fri, 11 Mar 1994, Donald M. Lance wrote:
> Tim Frazer commented on conscious attempts to change accent. I agree that
> accent itself can't be changed by conscious effort -- not in a massive
> global sense. But one might change a relatively small pattern, such as
> [u] / [ju] after coronal obstruents, as I did in my teenage years. My
>
I'm a week behind, Don. But I wanted to note I was especially thinking
of folks like that lady in Chatanooga who gives speech lessons to
southerners who want to talk like Yankees cause they want to get ahead.
I can't believe she has any success withjust those office visits and
tongue strengtheners. Ifhere clients moved to Cleveland and hung out
with Yankee yuppies, of course, that's different, but notconscious either.
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 07:45:52 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Conscious Learning of Accent
On Sat, 12 Mar 1994, Donald M. Lance wrote:
> fronting. The Ozarkers do make these subtle changes. I don't have much
> contact with students in Agriculture, Business. or Engineering, but I
> suspect that they make less effort to change than the Arts & Sciences
> students do. My students also tell of changing accent when they go home
> (like the Yali from Sparta in the video "American Tongues"). This, I'd
> say, is "consciously changing accent" to some degree. Biloquiality,
> with conscious effort at some age. Maybe others will want to expand on this
> complex topic. Natural-sounding biloquiality may be hard to accomplish.
> Tim seems to be suggesting that it's impossible. DMLance
>
Don, I'm stil catching up so I haven't seen the responses. Meanwhile, on
your guess about engineering students: Remember all those non-Inland
Northern speaking engineers we use to hear from NASA on space shot telecasts?
Tim
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 09:57:28 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: COOL /u/ or /y/
On Sat, 19 Mar 1994, Timothy C. Frazer wrote:
I have to send this again because it bounced. What gives?
> On David Bergdahl's note about raising /E/ to /e/ before esh, so
> "Special" = "spatial." Note Dan Rather's pron. of "national."
>
> Tim Frazer
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 12:39:36 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/
Re Tim Frazer's note of Dan Rather's pronunciation of , I hadn't
noticed it because it is normal Southern/South Midland to have a /y/-glide
after lax front vowels before palatals, e.g. /sh/. Perceptually to non-
natives, this may sometimes appear to raise the vowel into the next higher
position, or create homonymy, whereas for natives it is a low-level phonetic
rule which, while exerting a raising effect on the vowel, generally does not
change its phonemic status. Occasionally words do slip over the line,
however, as in becoming /kEch/.
The same glide rule operates before Nasal + Vl. Stop clusters for /ae/,
parallel to the backing to /a/ in British English, and again occasionally
changes the phonemic status of the vowel, as in shifting from /kaeynt/
to /keynt/. But native speakers are normally not aware of the phenomenon,
and keep the vowels separate phonemically.
I imagine this is the same thing going on in David Bergdahl's hearing
of the pronunciation of . Natives would have to be consulted to see
if they had really restructured the lexical entry to homonymize with .
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 13:47:29 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: journalist seeks help
Re Tim Frazer's response to my seeming not to notice that he wondered over
ads-l whether "speech correctionists" can really get rid of anyone's
regional dialect. As I was responding, it occurred to me that Tim had
that one scenario in mind, but I was off and running on a tangent that
has yielded some interesting discussion.
On Tim's point. Those of you who're fortunate enough to have access to the
wonderful video "American Tongues" might recall the Brooklyn native who
represented a drug company and had trouble getting clients in the Midwest to
focus on WHAT she said. Evidence in the video indicated that she'd had
dialect training, but nary a whit of the training came through in her speech
on the video. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 13:58:40 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/
Re Rudy Troike's /aey/ --> /ey/ discussion, in response to David Bergdahl's
comment on special/spatial.
Evidence from one family, reported by one member of that family, is not
huge amount of data, but I wouldn't include /kaent/ [kaeInt] --> /keynt/
for 'can't' in that list. The Lance family, for the generations whose
speech I know of, say /keynt/ all the time in conversation. I learned not
to tense the vowel in formal style, but am not always successful in keeping
the monitor active while I'm, e.g., giving a lecture on dialect -- that is,
I slip into my /keynt/ phonology. My father tensed and raised the vowel in
our last name -- sometimes -- and his mother did all the time. My father's
mother was a Watkins, not a Lance, but that was her pronunciation. Some
descendents of 1750s immigrants in our line have kept the spelling 'Lentz'.
The Lance tribe does not have /E/ raising before alveopalatals, except for
ketch (which I suspect is a lexical matter rather than phonological, along with
git -- at least in 20th century form). We don't systematically have [eI] in
measure and special. My judgment of family language is no doubt colored by
my Valley Talk to some extent.
I agree fully with Rudy's comment on Dan Rather's vowel in national. Dan is
from way up the coast by Houston, from Wharton. And Lee Pederson (in vol 7
of LAGS) has a dialect boundary just south of the Bay City, El Campo, Wharton
area. Rudy and I are from one side of that line and Dan is from the other.
So Rudy and I, from a closely-related, neighboring dialect will hear things in
Dan Rather's speech that people in Illinois don't (cf. Dennis Preston's
data on Indianans' and Michiganders' placement of 9 speakers of regional
dialect along a line from Saginaw MI to Dothan AL -- reported in his
articles in HEARTLAND ENGLISH and AMERICAN DIALECT RESEARCH (U of Ala P and
J Benjamins presses, both 1993).
So what's my main point? That one shouldn't include /ae/ raising before
[nasal + vl stop] in the same general raising rule that accounts for
Bergdahl's [EI]. (N.B. The "raised" pronunciation of 'Lance' has an
excrescent [t].) Regional evidence, as well as historical evidence as well
as we can reconstruct it, probably supports my hypothesis better than
Rudy's. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 14:08:40 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/
In response to Don Lance's very informative and insightful note, I just want
to clarify that I was not intending to combine the rules; just commenting
on some parallel effects. The /ae/ --> /aey/ Southern rule operates before
Nasal + Vl Stop and before Vl Fricatives -- a curious combination -- which
is the same context as affects the British/Boston /ae/ --> /a/, and is clearly
different from the simple assimilative development of a [y]-glide preceding
palatals.
On the excresent [t] in , I have it all the time anyway. I
cannot without the greatest concentration make a distinction between
and , as a British friend was fond of pointing out. Lexicalization
of these things, and different strata of learning, can produce contrasts even
within individual speech, as one East Texas speaker I know who distinguishes
/paeynts/ "article of clothing" and /paents/ "what a dog does", since they
were learned at different times under different circumstances.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 14:32:41 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re-sending Bounced Message on /aey/
For some reason, for the second time today I've had a message bounced on
the claim that it had already been sent. So if this arrives twice,
my apologies.
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/
To: Multiple recipients of list ADS-L
In response to Don Lance's very informative and insightful note, I just want
to clarify that I was not intending to combine the rules; just commenting
on some parallel effects. The /ae/ --> /aey/ Southern rule operates before
Nasal + Vl Stop and before Vl Fricatives -- a curious combination -- which
is the same context as affects the British/Boston /ae/ --> /a/, and is clearly
different from the simple assimilative development of a [y]-glide preceding
palatals.
On the excresent [t] in , I have it all the time anyway. I
cannot without the greatest concentration make a distinction between
and , as a British friend was fond of pointing out. Lexicalization
of these things, and different strata of learning, can produce contrasts even
within individual speech, as one East Texas speaker I know who distinguishes
/paeynts/ "article of clothing" and /paents/ "what a dog does", since they
were learned at different times under different circumstances.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 21:58:11 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Southern Palatal Glide in /aesh/
What's interesting about hearing this glide in someone like rather's
speech is that, at least in the south midland speech of Illinois, this
feature (the glide) seems to be disappearing. I had a sample of about 50
speakers from this area, and only the older ones, for the most part,
regularly had the glide in "crash" or "ash."
Timn Frazer
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 18 Mar 1994 to 19 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 7 messages totalling 111 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. French linguistic legislation
2. Dan Rather (3)
3. Homophone?
4. help
5. Bouncing message reports
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 10:57:47 -0500
From: Tom McClive
Subject: Re: French linguistic legislation
I wonder if anyone can comment on a French speaker coming to a city like
New York; which, like Paris, is a place different from the rest of the
country, and where people are supposed to be rude.
I have had some wonderful experiences in France, including Paris,
speaking French. I have had some wonderful experiences on visits even
before I learned how to speak French. But I wonder about visitors
wandering around New York City trying to speak English to the natives.
How are they treated? Do people expect them to speak English instead of
another language? Would anyone scorn their imperfect English? On the
whole, I would rather be in Paris with imperfect French than in NYC with
imperfect English.
Tom McClive
tommcc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gibbs.oit.unc.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 14:04:40 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Dan Rather
I never realized Dan Rather was from the Deep South until I heard him
broadcasting from inside a recently abandoned Iraqi bunker during the
Gulf War. He looked weary, had a heavy 5 o'clock shadow, and didn't use
a single post-vocalic /r/ in the whole report!
Ellen Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 14:29:23 -0500
From: Martha Howard
Subject: Homophone?
I hope that all of you expert dialecticians can figure out for me just where
the editor making up a crossword I worked comes from. (Anybody want to
diagram *that* sentence?) The clue was "homphone for 'air' ." The
answer turned out to be "ire." (I know because I cheated, as usual, and
looked upthe answer in the back of the book.) I have heard the aIr of
fire, tire, etc. in dialects as the a in cot and father but never as
e in hate. To add my two cents to the French discussion, I too had very
pleasant experiences in Paris and also during a four week tour covering
2600 miles of France, north, south, east, and west. The French are not
really very cordial toward each other and they don't treat us any
differently--except in several cases where they were nicer. I would
try my schoolbook French, look hoepful, and say "
was that right/?" In every case I was assured that it was *almost* right
and when I asked how to correctly say something, the French were very
gracious about helping me. Of course, the fact that I obviously liked
their red wine probably helped break the ice.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 15:35:42 -0500
From: LAUGHING SPIDER
Subject: help
I'd like to have some info about this list...anybody help me ????? :-)
Luca
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 21:42:38 -0600
From: Nancy Harwood
Subject: Re: Dan Rather
On Mon, 21 Mar 1994, Ellen Johnson wrote:
> I never realized Dan Rather was from the Deep South until I heard him
> broadcasting from inside a recently abandoned Iraqi bunker during the
> Gulf War. He looked weary, had a heavy 5 o'clock shadow, and didn't use
> a single post-vocalic /r/ in the whole report!
>
I think Dan Rather was born in Houston, Texas...I'm sure that's where he
grew up...he went to college in Huntsville, Texas.
Nancy Harwood
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 20:59:31 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Dan Rather
I wouldn't call the part of Texas Dan came from the "Deep South"; it is
mostly South Midland. I did note once that he used a nice double modal
when reporting the response of a tank-soldier.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 21:15:15 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Bouncing message reports
I am still getting messages back from my local listserv saying my messages to
ADS-L have been bounced because they are supposedly duplicates of previous
messages. I'm wondering if this is a problem with the ADS-L listserv or our
local system? The messages seem to echo back o.k. from ADS-L before I get
the bounced mail notice from my local listserv? Would it help if I sent back
the error notice?
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 19 Mar 1994 to 21 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 5 messages totalling 96 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Actors and accents (2)
2. Bouncing message reports (2)
3. lucrative consultantship
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 06:47:00 EDT
From: "David A. Johns"
Subject: Actors and accents
The stereotyped identification of Southern accents with hickish
themes, interestingly enough, is reversible.
For any of you who admit to having watched Hee Haw, recall the regular
who played the announcer at radio station KORN. When I first heard
him, I was living in rural Wisconsin, and I remember thinking that he
sounded just like some of the older farmers in that area. Later
someone told me that he was actually a Canadian Shakespearean actor
who was doing the Hee Haw shtick on a lark, and was apparently
imitating rural accents from his home area. I've pointed him out to
several Southerners over the past few years, and none had ever
identified him as a Yankee. Rural Southern.
An even better example was the actor Walter Brennan. He always played
Appalachian or Ozark hillbillies, but his accent always sounded to me
like rural northern New England (I grew up in western Massachusetts).
It turns out Brennan was born and raised in Lynn, Massachusetts, a
suburb of Boston. Coming from there he shouldn't have sounded so
rubish, but the basic vowel patterns would have been the same as in
New Hampshire or Vermont. Again, no one I have ever asked, including
Southern and Southern Midland speakers, ever suspected that anything
was amiss -- unless they were familiar with that particular accent.
Once more, rural Southern.
David Johns
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 06:37:58 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: Bouncing message reports
> I am still getting messages back from my local listserv saying my messages to
> ADS-L have been bounced because they are supposedly duplicates of previous
> messages. I'm wondering if this is a problem with the ADS-L listserv or our
> local system? The messages seem to echo back o.k. from ADS-L before I get
> the bounced mail notice from my local listserv? Would it help if I sent back
> the error notice?
Although I realize that it makes no sense to say in answer to your first
question above that the problem does not appear to be specific either to
ADS-L or to your local system, that's the impression I got yesterday when
this problem was being discussed on LSTOWN-L (list for listowners). Several
people reported the problem yesterday with several different LISTSERV lists
and different local systems. If the techies on LSTOWN-L figure out some
scientific explanation for it, I'll let you know (or do something about it
if it's related specifically to ADS-L). Meanwhile, my theory is that it's
another temporary rampage of the Net Goblins.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 08:01:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: Actors and accents
David Johns has not been talking to the right Southerners. I certainly knew
the KORN announ cer (of Hee-Haw fame) and Walter Brennan were not South
Midland speakers. I suspected Brennan of being rural New England (not bad),
and I actually thought the KORN annoujncer was British doing something which
he thought was Southern. (Turns out he was Canadian; give me a C-.)
If Johns means that nonlinguists saw noting amiss in these performances, I
suppose I could be convinced, but I will have to have evidence from more than
a few Southerners he has spoken to.
Dennis Preston <22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 09:13:33 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Bouncing message reports
Natalie--
It must be a virtual problem.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 13:34:42 -0500
From: No Name Given
Subject: lucrative consultantship
Dear fellow netters:
Suppose you wefeatures would you insist on? As a native deep sout
convincingly mid-western way, specifically Wisconsonian (no further elaboration
at this time). What would you want to make sure that actor sa
speaker, Icould use some advise. In return, I'll arrange for you, too, to end
up in bright lights. An Academy Award for "Most Convincing Dialect Coaching
Job?" Dan Noland (nolandd[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vxc.uncwil.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 21 Mar 1994 to 22 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 7 messages totalling 149 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Dan Rather
2. for the record (4)
3. March Madness
4. Bounced messaged
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 00:10:05 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Dan Rather
Dan Rather grew up in Wharton, Texas, 50 miles west-southwest of Houston.
LAGS, vol 7, p. xiv, gives the label "West Central Gulf Coast" to the area
from New Orleans to about 30 miles west of Wharton. More like "Deep South"
than Corpus Christi. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 10:08:06 CST
From: Mike Picone
Subject: for the record
Just for the record, I heard another instance of NPR anti-Southern
bias this morning on the radio. Kokie Roberts was referring to some
federal legislator (whose name I didn't catch) when she said that he
"mumbled in a Mississippi drawl that nobody understands." I will bet
money that the person in question was a white Southerner, for she would
never have permitted herself such a derogatory remark if it had been
otherwise. In fact, the insult is all the greater because of the exaggeration,
for even if someone of another ethnic group conceivably spoke a divergent
variety of English or an "accented" variety that impeded comprehension, such
a remark would be considered inappropriate. Yet in this case it is not
credible that the variety of English she is referring to is actually
unintelligible to her or anyone else, but she did not hesitate to use
exaggeration to make a negative insinuation based on linguistic habits.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 11:33:04 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: for the record
Isn't Kokie Roberts' family from Louisiana? She overcame or avoided that
awful Southern dialect, so why can't the mumbler from Mississippi? If one
wants to be upper-class General American, one does not have a strong Southern
accent. Certain New England accents will do, but Mississippi, no. Kokie's
phonology would be an interesting study.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 11:53:18 CDT
From: Randy Roberts
Subject: March Madness
Text item: Text_1
Recently a query came my way about the origin/earliest usage of
"March Madness" to refer to the NCAA basketball tournament. I have
found one 1982 newspaper citation in the Peter Tamony Collection which
uses it in this sentence: "Because what was once March Madness, the
NCAA basketball tournament, has been replaced by Free Throw Fever." I
also found one use of the phrase from the 1963 London Times in the
Clarence Barnhart/Scott-Foresman Collection. "Now, I think it would
be mid-summer or March madness for anyone to oppose collective
security." Does anyone have some information or earlier examples of
March Madness in the basketball sense? Can anyone tell me if March
madness is a Briticism or offer other insights? I believe I've
checked the relevant published sources.
Randy Roberts, Univ. of Missouri-Columbia
robertsr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ext.missouri.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 13:03:07 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject: Re: for the record
In Message Wed, 23 Mar 1994 10:08:06 CST,
Mike Picone writes:
>Just for the record, I heard another instance of NPR anti-Southern
>bias this morning on the radio. Kokie Roberts was referring to some
>federal legislator (whose name I didn't catch) when she said that he
>"mumbled in a Mississippi drawl that nobody understands." I will bet
>money that the person in question was a white Southerner, for she would
>never have permitted herself such a derogatory remark if it had been
>otherwise. In fact, the insult is all the greater because of the exaggeration,
>for even if someone of another ethnic group conceivably spoke a divergent
>variety of English or an "accented" variety that impeded comprehension, such
>a remark would be considered inappropriate. Yet in this case it is not
>credible that the variety of English she is referring to is actually
>unintelligible to her or anyone else, but she did not hesitate to use
>exaggeration to make a negative insinuation based on linguistic habits.
>
>Mike Picone
>University of Alabama
I heard that too, Mike. It was about the chair of the House appropriations
committee, whose name I've forgotten, the one who hadn't missed a vote
in umpteen years and is now ill and whose name I think begins with H.
I was struck by Roberts' bias as well. I think it warrants a reply.
NPR gives out its email address, but I always miss it as I'm either
driving or cooking while I listen to the news. Has anyone jotted it
down?
Dennis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 13:12:48 -0500
From: Martha Howard
Subject: Bounced messaged
I too have joined the elite group of "those who have been bounced." Glad
to know it is not just my own stupidity. Her goes again. In working a
crossword recently, I came across the following clue "homophone for 'air'."
A three letter word was indicated. It worked out to be "ire." Any educated
guesses as to the dialect region to which the puzzle maker belongs? I have
heard 'ire' pronounced to rhyme with 'far'. but I don' recall hearing it
asrhyming with 'hay'. In my dialect, air rhymes with where, hair, there,
etc. Of course, my dialect is *not* homogenous. Marckwardt once described
it as polyglot: playground terms from Chicago (lived there from birth to
seven years of age), farm terms from the Ozarks (lived on a farm in
or outside of Hollister, Mo--2 miles south of Branson--from nine to
thirteen), everything else Michigan (13-28). Now, after 44 years in
northern West Virginia, who knows what I sound Like! Not Walter
Brennan, I assusre you!
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 17:35:08 EST
From: "Michael McGoff, Assoc. Dean,
Acad. Affairs/Admin."
Subject: Re: for the record
In response to the statement about the NPR broadcast "derogatory remark",
Isn't Cokie Roberts from the South? Perhaps even Mississippi? This
may be an inside joke.
Michael F. McGoff
State University of New York at Binghamton
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 22 Mar 1994 to 23 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 9 messages totalling 209 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. lucrative consultantship-the legible version
2. for the record (4)
3. record
4. Info from Sigmund Eisner at UArizona (2)
5. mississippi madness
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 13:41:23 -0500
From: Dan Noland
Subject: lucrative consultantship-the legible version
What I meant to type was that a company here in Wilmington, NC needs help get-
ting an actor to deliver lines as a (generic) Wisconsin native. I'm not
native mid-western, so I could use some advise as to which features you
would predict have highest utility. What sources might you suggest?
Dan Noland (nolandd[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vxc.uncwil.edu)
ng
an
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 09:07:01 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: for the record
> >bias this morning on the radio. Kokie Roberts was referring to some
> >federal legislator (whose name I didn't catch) when she said that he
> >"mumbled in a Mississippi drawl that nobody understands." I will bet
> >money that the person in question was a white Southerner, for she would
> >never have permitted herself such a derogatory remark if it had been
> >otherwise. In fact, the insult is all the greater because of the exaggeration
> >for even if someone of another ethnic group conceivably spoke a divergent
> >variety of English or an "accented" variety that impeded comprehension, such
> >a remark would be considered inappropriate. Yet in this case it is not
> >credible that the variety of English she is referring to is actually
> >unintelligible to her or anyone else, but she did not hesitate to use
> >exaggeration to make a negative insinuation based on linguistic habits.
> >
> >Mike Picone
> >University of Alabama
>
The insult is all the worse since Kokie is the daughter of Hale Boggs.
Am I not mistook that he was a rep. from Louisiana?
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 09:43:06 CST
From: Mike Picone
Subject: Re: for the record
Concerning Michael McGoff's suggestion that the derogatory reference was
an inside joke:
I don't know where Cokie/Kokie Roberts is from (I don't even know how to
spell her name). Louisiana and now Mississippi have been suggested. But I must
say that there was absolutely no hint of jocularity betrayed by any
intonational index or anything else that I was aware of. The remark was dead
serious, regardless of Robert's own place of origin.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 10:58:05 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Re: for the record
On Wed, 23 Mar 1994, Donald M. Lance wrote:
If one
> wants to be upper-class General American, one does not have a strong Southern
> accent. Certain New England accents will do, but Mississippi, no. Kokie's
>
Although congressional representatives are way up there on the social
class scale (since you have to be pretty wealthy to run for office), they
are under pressure, instead, to maintain strong regional dialects so that
their constituents will think they identify with them and they can get
re-elected. Doonesbury had a great strip once on Al Gore switching
between East Tennessee twang in one campaign setting and harvardese in
another. When I was in Chile, I recommended C-SPAN to the EFL
teachers I had in my classes as a way to improve listening comprehension
for American English. (Yes, they have it there on cable.)
Ellen Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 10:15:00 CST
From: Edward Callary
Subject: record
Cokie Roberts is indeed the daughter of Hale Boggs, representative
fro Louisians. She is also the daughter of Lindy Boggs, who
succeeded Hale upon his death and just retired a year or so ago
Although it's been 20 years since I left Louisiana, the general
impression was (and I would expect still is) that there are a
number of cultured dialects along the Pearl river, but Mississippian
is not one.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 09:29:25 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Info from Sigmund Eisner at UArizona
On March madness and other matters, I'm passing along information from
my Chaucerian colleague Sigmund Eisner.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu
From: UACCIT::SEISNER "Sigmund Eisner" 24-MAR-1994 08:21
To: UACCIT::RTROIKE
CC: SEISNER
Subj: March madness
Rudy:
Certainly "as mad as a March hare" must have some connection, other
than obvious alliteration, with "March madness." "As mad as a March hare"
is a Briticism refering to a fact that in March the hare (in Arizona read
"jackrabbit") enjoys his mating season and as a result is careless about
his personal safety. The expression, of course, is used by Lewis Carroll
in the mid nineteenth century. But certainly it was as old as "Mad Hatter"
and equally known to Carroll's audience. "Mad Hatter" comes from an
ingredient used in pressing hats. It was said to have an intoxicating
effect on the hat makers, who used a large quantity of it. Still, in spite
of the relationship, I think it comes from sportswriters' love for the
pithy phrase. Take, for instance, "he doesn't have a china man's chance":
Peter Tamony, mentioned by one of your correspondents and an old friend,
once pointed out that nineteenth century British sportswriters called a
boxer who would fly into pieces when hit "a china man." He also showed me
nineteenth-century British sports newspapers to back up his claim. The
expression went from England to Australia and came across the Pacific to
California with the "Sydney Ducks" about a century ago. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with either the Chinese or the California gold fields, as
has often been said. Sportswriters have given us many expressions,
especially from cock fighting: "pit them together," "in the ring," "spur
them on."
Enough?
Sig
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 12:33:16 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: Info from Sigmund Eisner at UArizona
Hatters more likely mad from the mercury used in felting fur and fiber;
irreversible neurological impairment familiar again, alas, via the tuna
taint.
Robert Kelly / kelly[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]levy.bard.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 13:30:53 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject: mississippi madness
Now the name comes back to me, as I read today's NY Times. Cokey was
referring to William H. Natcher, the ailing 84-year-old representative
from -- you got it, Kentucky. Unless of course she was confusing him with
Jamie L. Whitten, the 83-year-old Mississippi senior member of the
House Appropriations Committee whom Natcher replaced last year.
In any case, the new committee chair is from Wisconsin. He's got a
thick midwestern accent (that's a line from a cartoon and originally
referred to Gerald Ford's "thick Michigan accent."
Dennis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 16:04:39 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: for the record
Here are some e-mail addresses for NPR. I hope people will follow
Dennis's suggestion of protesting. I may do it, although I'm afraid
my anger will end up making my protest less coherent. Anti-Southern
bias is one of very few things in the world that evoke anger in me.
The only thing that makes me even angrier than anti-Southern bias is
the even more specific anti-Mississippi bias. Like many Southerners,
I feel what is perhaps an irrationally strong attachment to my state.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
**********************************
Weekend Edition/Sunday (wesun[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]clark.net)
Weekend All Things Considered (watc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]cap.gwu.edu)
Talk of the Nation (totn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com)
Science Friday (scifri[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com)
Fresh Air (freshair[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]shrsys.hslc.org)
Please note that e-mail to the above addresses cannot be
forwarded to other NPR departments (Audience Services,
Transcripts/Tapes, Morning Edition, Weekday ATC, Weekend
Edition/Saturday, etc.).
For more information, or to order a transcript or tape, call NPR Audience
Services at (202) 414-3232.
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 23 Mar 1994 to 24 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 3 messages totalling 93 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. anti-southern bias
2. for the record
3. address (fwd)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 08:56:14 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: anti-southern bias
I'm convinced Whitewater would be getting a lot less press if Clinton
were from the industrial northeast or California. A lot of pundits blame
the clintons for "arrogance." Well, Bush did a lot of arrogant things
too, and his boys raked off billions, but the press put up with a lot
(until the last year) because Bush is part of the old NE elite.
I don't think thats partisanship talking when I say that.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 10:57:27 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject: Re: for the record
In Message Thu, 24 Mar 1994 16:04:39 -0600,
Natalie Maynor writes:
>Here are some e-mail addresses for NPR. I hope people will follow
>Dennis's suggestion of protesting. I may do it, although I'm afraid
>my anger will end up making my protest less coherent. Anti-Southern
>bias is one of very few things in the world that evoke anger in me.
>The only thing that makes me even angrier than anti-Southern bias is
>the even more specific anti-Mississippi bias. Like many Southerners,
>I feel what is perhaps an irrationally strong attachment to my state.
> --Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
>
>**********************************
>Weekend Edition/Sunday (wesun[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]clark.net)
>Weekend All Things Considered (watc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]cap.gwu.edu)
>Talk of the Nation (totn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com)
>Science Friday (scifri[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com)
>Fresh Air (freshair[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]shrsys.hslc.org)
Add to Natalie's list NPR's 800 number:
1-800-235-1212
And snail mail: 635 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC 20001-3753.
Dennis
--
>
>Please note that e-mail to the above addresses cannot be
>forwarded to other NPR departments (Audience Services,
>Transcripts/Tapes, Morning Edition, Weekday ATC, Weekend
>Edition/Saturday, etc.).
>For more information, or to order a transcript or tape, call NPR Audience
>Services at (202) 414-3232.
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 12:16:07 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Re: address (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 10:31:13 -0500 (EST)
From: NPR Weekend Sunday
To: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Re: address
On Fri, 25 Mar 1994, Ellen Johnson wrote:
> Could you please send me the address for (weekday) Morning Edition on NPR?
> Also for (weekday) all things considered.
>
> Thanks, Ellen Johnson
> ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
>
>
These programs are not reachable by e-mail. You can write:
National Public Radio
635 Massachusettes Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20001
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 24 Mar 1994 to 25 Mar 1994
************************************************
There is one message totalling 55 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Wisconsin accent
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 20:19:00 EDT
From: "David A. Johns"
Subject: Wisconsin accent
# What I meant to type was that a company here in Wilmington, NC
# needs help get- ting an actor to deliver lines as a (generic)
# Wisconsin native. I'm not native mid-western, so I could use some
# advise as to which features you would predict have highest
# utility. What sources might you suggest? Dan Noland
# (nolandd[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vxc.uncwil.edu)
Coincidentally, the night before I read this I had just spent an hour
on the phone with a friend who grew up on a farm in Beaver Dam,
Wisconsin (about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee) and has lived in
Burlington (45 miles southwest of Milwaukee) for the past 20 years.
He's high school educated, of Norwegian extraction.
His pronunciation is basically "general American," but some deviations
stand out:
* He has a very wide tone range in his intonation. As compared
to standard speakers, people in that area sound excited all
the time.
* He has a tense, monophthongal /o/ (in BOAT, GO, etc.). Sounds
very much like the corresponding German vowel.
* He raises the vowel in WRITE, etc.
* The vowel in ABOUT, HOUSE, etc., is just about like the
general American vowel in BOAT, GO. If you're not listening
for it, you'll think that ABOUT and A BOAT are homophones,
but the former has a diphthong and the latter doesn't. The
conditioning environment seems to be the same as in the
Canadian phenomenon, but the vowel is noticeably different.
* His /e/ (as in PLAY, TODAY) is tenser and more monophthongal
than in general American, but not quite as Germanic sounding
as the /o/.
* The /a/ (HOT) is a little fronted, and the /O/ (CAUGHT) is
less rounded than in general American.
* The glide in /aj/ diphthongs (TIME) goes further toward [i]
than it does in general American. This may also be true of
/aw/, but I really notice it with /aj/.
I can't think of any words that he pronounced with a different vowel
than I would expect, but some people in that area pronounce the prefix
UN- with /a/ instead of /^/.
David Johns
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 25 Mar 1994 to 27 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 13 messages totalling 230 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. "Off" (again) (2)
2. Wisconsin accent (7)
3. Clinton's speech (4)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 09:29:00 CST
From: Tom Murray
Subject: "Off" (again)
Here's one for the "For What It's Worth" file, regarding "off" (as in "off ox,"
etc., which has gotten so much attention of late): James Herriot, in his late
st book (Every Living Thing, 1992, Canadian paperback edition, p. 209), writes,
"The cow was lame in the off hind foot, and as I bent down and put a finger be
tween the cleats, she aimed a warning kick at me." Surely this "off" is the sa
me as the one in "off ox"? Herriot uses the phrase with absolutely no explanat
ion--could it be something he's picked up in Yorkshire? Or, since he's origina
lly from Glasgow, could it be something native to Scots English?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 11:18:31 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: "Off" (again)
Bound to fetch a comment from a cricketer about Silly Mid Off
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 10:45:29 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Thanks to David Johns for a good account of non-English influence.
Please, though, let's don't use the term "General American." I like
better Raven McDavid's acronym, SWINE, for "STandard White Inland
Northern English." It IS a regional dialect, promoted by John Kenyon
as GA, which he later admitted was the pronunciation of the Cleveland area
(obviously he meant white niddle-class Cleveland.)
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 09:58:16 -0800
From: THOMAS L CLARK
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
David John writes about a Wisconsin dialect,
but what the hell is this "general American" he keeps on about?
Cheers,
tlc
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 10:18:48 -0800
From: Roger Vanderveen
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Thanks to David Johns for a good account of non-English influence.
Please, though, let's don't use the term "General American." I like
better Raven McDavid's acronym, SWINE, for "STandard White Inland
Northern English." It IS a regional dialect, promoted by John Kenyon
as GA, which he later admitted was the pronunciation of the Cleveland area
(obviously he meant white niddle-class Cleveland.)
If this is meant to be a politically-correct joke, then I am surprised that no
one bothered to find a way to insert an abbreviation for the word "male" in
the acronym.
If it's not, then I think it's one of the most stupid, most un-professional
terms ever invented.
===============================================================================
Roger Vanderveen Intel Corporation
Hillsboro, OR Take me down to Jones's farm
===============================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 13:02:22 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
In a recent posting I used the term 'General American' and later realized I
should have put it in quotation marks or inverted commas lest dialectologists
out there think I believe it's a real dialect. Kenyon began using the term
in about the 4th edition of his book AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION, after Krapp and
Mencken introduced it. In Kenyon & Knott's dictionary and in Kenyon's
book they divided American English into 3 dialects: Northeastern (eastern New
England and metro New York), Southern (Southern + South Midland below the
Ohio) and General American. The term is useful for referring to rhotic
varieties, but ah/aw merger and the Northern Cities Shift, as well as
contemporary developments in MN and WI (cf new posting on Wisconsin speech) --
and all the LANCS and LAUM publications -- reduce the usefulness of the term.
DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 15:37:51 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: Clinton's speech
I have promised to respond tomorrow to an AP reporter who's working on a
story about the president's speech. He's faxed me a list of phrases he's
collected and would like to know their origin, meaning, and what the
usage says about the speaker. Also he'd welcome comparisons to past
presidents and general reactions to Clinton's lang. use. What say ye?
Phrases:
I'd JUMP ON this like FLIES ON A JUNEBUG
don't have to be as bright as a TREE FULL OF OWLS to figure out...
[good intentions, but] THERE ARE A LOT OF SLIPS BTW THE CUP AND THE LIP
[in diplomacy] THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS
still be in Wash. THROWING MUD BALLS AT EACH OTHER
they're in a REAL PICKLE
THAT'S THE RUB [=problem]
GOBBLYGOOK language
Euphemisms:
don't give a rip
don't give a lick
out the wazoo
load of hooey
bunch of bull
Anyone have comments on these or care to cite others? Does anyone know
the exact wording of a sentence like "They went to dinner with Hillary
and I a few times". I recall the hypercorrection involved Hillary but I
don't recall the rest of the context. The reporter thinks "out the
wazoo" is a "generational thing", but I'm not so sure.
Ellen Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 16:18:44 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Clinton's speech
Ellen,
I dunno about that reporter. If you don't like Clinton, you might want to
cooperate, but if you do like him, you might watch out. Sounds like he's
fixing
to trash the speech and wants to talk about what he thinks is "quaint
Arkansas language." They did it to Carter and to LBJ (before, even, he
got embroiled in Vietnam.)
Tim
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 16:29:39 -0600
From: Charles F Juengling-2
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
On Mon, 28 Mar 1994 mftcf%UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vm1.spcs.umn.edu wrote:
> Thanks to David Johns for a good account of non-English influence.
> Please, though, let's don't use the term "General American." I like
> better Raven McDavid's acronym, SWINE, for "STandard White Inland
> Northern English." It IS a regional dialect, promoted by John Kenyon
> as GA, which he later admitted was the pronunciation of the Cleveland area
> (obviously he meant white niddle-class Cleveland.)
>
> Tim Frazer
SWINE !!! I can hardly believe that McDavid would have uttered such
rubbish. It's even harder to believe that someone would write it on the
LIST. If it's a joke, it's been lost on me. I hope I never see it again
on ADS-L.
CFJ
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 19:49:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" <22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Whaddaya think, pardners? They don't like SWINE; guess we'd better not tell'em
about SOD and GRITS. (Looks like dialectologists better keep their humor to
themselves.)
Dennis Preston
22709mgr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msu.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 21:18:36 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Clinton's speech
I suggest your journalist read William Safire's column this week. Some of
the items are probably in Mencken. Reporters should be willing to take the
time to do some research if they want to write about language.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 21:28:30 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Clinton's speech
The more I think about Ellen's AP reporter, the more annoyed I get that
journalists should lay the work on others so they can come up with a "quickie"
piece like this. As Mike Picone complained about Cokie Roberts, are we in
for another subtle round of regional bias? Will reporters comment on how
much of Clinton's language lacks regional identifiability? The press certainly
tried to use Lyndon Johnson's language as a subtle way to undermine him.
If Clinton is really a Southern hick, we can discount his Georgetown and Oxford
educational experiences, which make us uncomfortable in a President anyhow,
and thus ignore and contain his intellectual abilities by making a buffoon of
him. Should we be co-opted into reinforcing this? And supporting a reporter's
laziness to boot? Safire discussed "the devil is in the details" at some
length last year. Can't reporters read?
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 21:35:33 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Sad to see that Yankees can dish it out, but can't take it. McDavid was a
great one for humorous acronyms, and those reacting so negatively obviously
know nothing about him or about his scholarship. I think it is one of the
best acronyms I've heard yet, and certainly plan to use it in my classes.
Moral: before defending your Yankeehood so vehemently, seek enlightenment.
Presumably that is what ADS and ADS-L are about.
Now of course Don Lance and I know where the purest English is spoken.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 27 Mar 1994 to 28 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 9 messages totalling 148 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Clinton's speech
2. Wisconsin accent (6)
3. reporter
4. SWINE
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 08:32:21 EST
From: Wayne Glowka
Subject: Re: Clinton's speech
THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS
Tell this to your reporter:
Clinton's aphoristic description of the trouble involved in working out the
details of a massive public policy is a clever allusion to medieval
rewordings of ancient Germanic sayings about Loki and his other Teutonic
analogues. In the account of the Ragnarokr in the *Voluspa*, a wolf comes
to eat the moon, a wolf that appears when Loki, the monsters, and the
giants come to destroy Asgard. According to Jacob Grimm (*Teutonic
Mythology*, trans. J. S. Stallybrass [London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen,
1980], 244-46), Loki's name was replaced with that of the devil in sayings
about the chaos at the end of the world, with the result that
nineteenth-century Germans still said "the devil is broken loose" as the
medieval Norse said "Loki er or bo"ndum" or as Detmar said in his chronik
1, 298 "do was de duvel los geworden." Although the Aesir fall to the
monsters in the Ragnarokr, the *Voluspa* does predict a new world of grace
and harmony. Clinton, playing perhaps too heavily on his world-class
education, is cleverly implying that despite the fall of the world
order--or present policy--as we know it, a new world--a new policy--will
arise from which the devil (Loki, Saturn, Rush Limbaugh) has been removed
or at least returned to his chains.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wayne Glowka
Professor of English
Georgia College
Milledgeville, GA 31061
912-453-4222
wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 07:39:28 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
> Sad to see that Yankees can dish it out, but can't take it. McDavid was a
> great one for humorous acronyms, and those reacting so negatively obviously
> know nothing about him or about his scholarship. I think it is one of the
I was relieved to see postings like this one because I was beginning to
think I was going crazy. When I saw a posting yesterday expressing surprise
at the SWINE acronym, my reaction was "Huh??" That's when I decided that
I must be missing something in the discussion (quite possible considering
how hurriedly I've been reading mail lately). I can't remember whether I
ever heard Raven McDavid use the SWINE acronym, but it certainly sounds like
him -- and is certainly a good acronym.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 09:11:01 -0500
From: Ellen Johnson
Subject: reporter
A bit more info on this reporter. It does seem to be a hastily put
together and poorly researched piece of work for a slow news week. It
does not appear to be a hostile piece making fun of the president. He
seems pretty sympathetic towards him and interested in his speech as
being indicative of his
age-group as well as his region of origin. He says that Clinton's use of
long and complex sentences makes him difficult to quote but much more
eloquent and better able to express complicated ideas than Bush.
He always needed a tape recorder for Clinton, even back in Arkansas (he's
been covering him for years).
Ellen Johnson
ellenj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 10:53:28 -0500
From: Robert Kelly
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
A word of praise for SWINE acronym, both denotation and connotation, and
thanks to the great Raven McD. I will use SWINE hereafter, swelp me. And
I am of (don't shoot) impeccably Union Army family.
rk
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 14:35:20 CST
From: "Donald M. Lance"
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
McDavid's notion of SWINE came out of, among other experiences, his attempts
to rent an apartment in Chicago. When he would call, he would be told he'd
have to come see it. When he appeared and looked like a white from
Greenville SC rather than what his speech had suggested over the phone,
the landlord was eager to show him the apartment. Raven had fun with these
situations. Irony and humor underlay much of his conversation. DMLance
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 16:15:49 -0600
From: Larry Davis
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Gawd--you yankees sure don't have much of a sense of humor. I for one,
however, certainly feel chastened and will promise to mend my ways.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 18:33:13 -0600
From: mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Raven also used to tell the story of going to the University of Michigan
and runn9i8ng afoul of a SWINEr who insisted that he (Raven) needed speech
remediation. And I think he said the same thing happened to Bob Van Riper.
Am I keeping my anecdotes straight?
Tim Frazer
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 20:58:20 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: SWINE
My colleague in the Linguistics Department, Dick Demers, adds the note that
"The good thing about SWINE is that it rhymes with STRYN, the English of
Australia."
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 20:37:43 -0800
From: THOMAS L CLARK
Subject: Re: Wisconsin accent
Like Kelly, I was bemused when I encountered SWINE in Frazer's
"Heartland" book and dee-lighted to learn that Raven is with us yet.
Interestingly though, Natalie, quick to take offense when her Mississippi or
Missouri (one o'them) is made mock of, seems to like this okay. Well, as
Spooner might of said, "if the foo shits..."
Cheers,
tlc
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 28 Mar 1994 to 29 Mar 1994
************************************************
There are 17 messages totalling 371 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. ADS-L Digest - 28 Mar 1994 to 29 Mar 1994 (2)
2. Wisconsin accent
3. Message ("your Name (6)
4. SWINE and cetera
5. Things Ravenesque
6. Popular Expressions (6)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 00:09:25 -0500
From: ALICE FABER
Subject: Re: ADS-L Digest - 28 Mar 1994 to 29 Mar 1994
I was delighted to read Wayne Glowka's _mise en scene_ for the supposedly
Arkansas expression "The devil is in the details". What the expression had
reminded me of is "God is in the details", an aphorism which I have seen
variously attributed to Albert Einstein and Mies van der Rohe! So, are these
related? Which came first? Etc?
Good night,
Alice Faber
Faber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]Yalehask.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 00:00:49 -0700
From: Rudy Troike
Subject: Re: ADS-L Digest - 28 Mar 1994 to 29 Mar 1994
Alice--
Look up your collection of Wm. Safire columns--he discussed this at
length in one last year.
--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 05:38:35 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor